


the square root of blue

by TheFlirtMeister



Category: GAIMAN Neil - Works, Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett, Pacific Rim (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Pacific Rim Fusion, Apocalypse, Eventual Happy Ending, Gen, Good Omens Big Bang, Multi, Platonic Relationships, Rated For Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-05
Updated: 2020-02-05
Packaged: 2021-02-27 14:01:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 27,712
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22408363
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheFlirtMeister/pseuds/TheFlirtMeister
Summary: Pippin Galadriel Moonchild is born, red-faced and screaming in the middle of a hippie commune, three months after Kaiju crawl out of the Pacific breach. The commune, which has shacked up on the outskirts of Mary Magdalene Forest, follow the teachings of BuenaKai and believe that the Kaiju will cleanse the world of humanity’s sins.They are, of course, wrong.Good Omens/Pacific Rim Fusion
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens), Pepper/Adam Young (Good Omens)
Comments: 8
Kudos: 12
Collections: Good Omens Big Bang 2019





	the square root of blue

**Author's Note:**

> Hello! Welcome to my 2019 Good Omens Big Bang fic. You probably need some working knowledge of the Pacific Rim universe to read this fic but here's the summary; big lizards from portal in the ocean get beaten up by giant robots.
> 
> Just in case people were wondering - Pepper and Adam are completely platonic in this fic, they love each other very much but they are also eleven.
> 
> Thank you to Nas, my incredible artist who drew the cutest Jaeger and the tiniest Adam and Pepper ;u; They are so small! They do not understand the scale of the war they're involved in! Please send her all your love on her tumblr/ao3 here: @aredblush
> 
> Thank you also to my beta, Soap, who literally saved my life with dialogue formatting and reminding me that putting the words "write more here" actually means you have to write the scene. If I didn't have them, this fic wouldn't exist. You can find them on Ao3 here: Soaponarope
> 
> Also, I wasn't kidding about the amount of Neil Gaiman characters in this fic. If you like Coraline and The Graveyard Book, this is the fic for you.

Pippin Galadriel Moonchild is born, red-faced and screaming in the middle of a hippie commune, three months after Kaiju crawl out of the Pacific breach. The commune, which has shacked up on the outskirts of Mary Magdalene Forest, follow the teachings of BuenaKai and believe that the Kaiju will cleanse the world of humanity’s sins.

They are, of course, wrong.

*

Pepper grows up knowing nothing but War—even though Oxfordshire is nowhere near the sea, so Kaiju are highly unlikely to attack. Lower Tadfield sits between Hadfield and Badfield, which Pepper’s mother uses as examples of why men should never name things. It’s around fifty miles away from the nearest motorway, although Pepper will never travel in a car until she’s around 11 years old. She won’t even learn to ride a bike until she’s 10.

It’s the environmental impact of the Kaiju that is the real cause for concern, however, with the crops failing and the sky turning grey and raining Kaiju blue. Pepper knows to run from the rain before she can walk. Blue stains everything it touches, blistering the fields and killing everything it falls upon.

That’s one of the reasons why Pepper and her mother leave the commune. They wake up one day to find the elders dancing in the middle of a storm, completely naked and singing. Pepper had watched, fascinated, from their tent as the vibrant blue rain thundered against the elders’ skin and their singing turned to screams.

Her mother had gotten them swiftly out of there and into a flat above the village pub, _The Axe and Bottle_ , formally _The Bottle and Stoat_. Everything that they own smells of stale beer, and Pepper cannot go barefoot anymore because the floor is sticky.

It’s better than living in a tent in the middle of the forest.

*

On her first day at her new school Pepper is given her own ration book, and the teacher attempts to send her away to do First Aid.

“I’m not doing First Aid by _myself_ ,” Pepper says when it’s brought up in the classroom. “Not unless the boys do it too.”

She’s sitting at the front of the class in the New Kid Seat, arms folded across her chest. She did her own plaits this morning, and they’ve come undone by the afternoon, hair sticking out all over the place.

The teacher, Mrs Loch, sighs. “Pepper, I’ve explained this. Boys do Woodwork and girls do First Aid.”

“That’s not fair!” Pepper says. “I want to do physical stuff, not poxy First Aid.”

“You get to practise on other people,” Mrs Loch says, in the hope that Pepper will enjoy pretending to choke so someone else will rescue her.

“I want to do Woodwork,” Pepper argues. “I’m not a _baby_.”

Mrs Loch realises she’s fighting a losing battle and casts her eye around the room. “Which of the boys would like to do First Aid with Pepper here?”

Brian, who somehow has a twig in his hair, sticks up his hand. “I’ve always wanted to be wrapped in bandages like a mummy.”

“It is an important life skill,” Wensleydale points out, adding his hand into the mix.

Adam Young, who sits beside Pepper on her right side, looks over at her. His eyes are the same shade of blue as a Kaiju, and he has constellations of freckles splashed across his nose. He raises his arm slowly, and Pepper finds herself wanting to reach out and touch his exposed skin. They’ve never spoken before, but they keep looking at one another, in an odd, confused sort of way.

“I’ll do it with you,” he says. “If you’d like.”

Pepper looks around at her group of First Aiders and nods.

“Alright,” she says, and for once in her life, finds herself pleased.

*

Having her own bedroom with four walls means that Pepper can decorate however she wants. It’s so much freedom that she doesn’t know what to do with it, laying on her bed and staring up at the ceiling as her brain cycles through ideas. Flowers crawling up the walls—too basic, pictures of her friends—too sappy and she doesn’t have any, random scribbles and notes—too cluttered.

Then the newspaper is pushed through the letterbox, with a special feature on the Jaeger program.

Pepper steals the supplement before her mother can even dream of ripping it up for compost and squirrels it away to her bedroom. She opens it up carefully on the bed, smoothing out the creases from where it was folded.

_Striker Eureka. Crimson Typhoon. Romeo Blue._

Pepper traces the Jaegers with her finger, studying the mechanical design, the different decals and paint jobs each Jaeger has. Next to each Jaeger are the profiles of the rangers: Yancy Becket, Herc Hansen, Stacker Pentecost.

She finds blue tack in one of her bedroom drawers and sets about sticking the posters to her walls. By the end of the night, her room looks like propaganda for Jaeger pilots, and she finds she’s rather proud of that.

When she curls up under the covers that night, listening to her mother argue with somebody on the phone, Pepper can look up and see the Wei Tang brothers looking down at her, stern-faced.

It makes her feel safe.

*

The next day, Pepper marches into the playground and makes a beeline for the Them, who are huddled by the entrance to the boy’s toilets. When she appears in front of them, they all look up guiltily.

“Oh, it’s you,” Adam says. “I thought you were a teacher.”

“Do I look like a teacher?” Pepper snaps, then remembers she’s here to make friends. “I want to trade with you.”

Brian folds his arms. “What have you got?” He asks, jutting out his chin.

Pepper reaches into her skirt pocket and pulls out the pack of trading cards she bought this morning at the post office. It cost her a lot of money, so she hopes she’s got something good.

Adam takes the packet from her, their fingertips brushing slightly against one another. Brian and Wensleydale crowd around him to look at the cards as he flicks through them.

“Got it.... Got it... Got it... Got it...” Brian says with each card, and then looks up. “Haven’t you got anything good?”

Wensleydale elbows him. “It’s her first try!”

“I know, but don’t come wanting to trade if you don’t have anything interesting—” Brian mutters when Adam interrupts.

“Here we go,” he says, and pulls out two cards that are embossed with a silver colour. “You’ve got shiny Doctor Fell and shiny Doctor Crowley. They’re super rare.”

“Holy hell,” Brian says, and looks up at Pepper. “Where did you get this pack?”

“Post Office,” Pepper says, secretly thrilled.

“You should keep hold of them.” Adam shoves the two shiny cards back into Pepper’s hand. “But I’ll help you swap some of your doubles.”

“Cool,” Pepper says, tucking the cards back into her skirt pocket. “Do you have a Sasha Kaidonovsky?”

Adam looks up at her through his fringe and smiles. “I might do. For a price.”

*

Pepper finds out that everyone in Lower Tadfield congregates in the pub on Saturday afternoon, and the kids are sent into the garden to play on the creaky jungle gym.

Pepper’s mother is upstairs in the flat, painting the walls a more “holistic” green. Pepper’s pretty sure they’re not allowed to change the wall colours but is interested in the argument between her mother and the landlord.

Pepper is hanging upside on the monkey bars, watching the other children play, and feels Adam Young approach her before she spots him.

“Hullo,” he says. “It’s a good thing you’re wearing overalls.”

“Why, otherwise I’d be flashing my knickers?” Pepper asks.

She drops down from the bars and stands directly in front of Adam. He’s taller than her already, and Pepper grinds her teeth in frustration. She doesn’t like having to look up at people, especially people who are the same age as she.

“Do you have a bike?” Adam asks.

Pepper shakes her head. “No. Why?”

Adam motions to Brian and Wensleydale, who are hovering by the gate to the outside world. They’re perched on bikes, looking anxiously towards the pub where parents could appear at any moment.

“We’re escaping,” Adam says. “Do you want to come?”

“I could be a spy,” Pepper says, “for the adults. I could report you.”

“You could,” Adam says. His eyes are shiny.

Pepper shoves her hands into her overalls. “But I guess I’ll make an exception. For you guys.”

“What are friends for?” Adam says, and Pepper doesn’t think she’s ever had friends before this.

“I’m not riding on the back of anyone’s bike,” she says, before she gets all soppy. “I’m not a damsel in distress.”

“You can ride mine, then.” Adam points to a bike leaning up against the gate. It’s red, Pepper’s favourite colour. “I’ll sit on the back.”

“Deal,” Pepper says. “Just don’t hold onto my waist or anything. In fact—just don’t touch me.”

“I won’t,” Adam promises, and Pepper hopes that riding a bike is easier than it looks.

*

It turns out that doing First Aid comes in handy when two people come toppling off a bike.

*

Pepper’s mother is waiting for her when she limps in late that evening, overalls stained green with grass and dirt.

“And where do you think you’ve been?” she asks Pepper, as Pepper tries to make her way past to go to bed.

“Out.”

“I can see that.” Her mother catches hold of Pepper’s arm, hand splattered with paint. “What if something had got you out there—”

“I was with people,” Pepper interrupts. “I wasn’t alone in the woods. And you’re hurting me.”

“You still can’t wander off—What if there’d been a rainstorm?”

“We’d have heard the siren and found shelter.” Pepper tries to wriggle out of her mother’s grip. “Can I go now?”

“You missed the evening news—”

“Let me guess,” Pepper manages to wrench her arm away. “Kaiju attacked, Jaegers fought, Kaiju died. Am I right?”

“Yancy Becket is dead.”

Pepper forgets how to breathe for a moment. “What?”

“The Kaiju tore him out of the Jaeger,” her mother says. “Threw him into the sea.”

Pepper takes a step back, stunned. “He can’t be dead—What about Raleigh?”

“He’s in the hospital,” her mother says and gives a sniff that shows exactly what she thinks of modern medicine.

“But he’s going to be okay, right?” Pepper asks. “I mean, you can’t just lose both Becket siblings?”

“I can’t see into his hospital room,” her mother replies and picks a dry leaf from Pepper’s curls, crumbling it between her fingers. “No matter how much I try and open my third eye.”

Pepper brushes away her mother’s hand. “I want him to be okay.”

“You’ve never met him.”

“I feel him,” Pepper says, and blinks at her own forthrightness.

Her mother sighs and then nods her head. “Okay,” she says. “I understand.”

Pepper thinks her mother will never understand her.

*

“We could be Jaeger pilots,” Brian says one day in Hogback Woods. He’s got a stick with a caterpillar nest clinging to the end of it and has been chasing the Them around with it for the past five minutes.

“No, we couldn’t.” Wensleydale is halfway up a tree, legs dangling. “We’re only 11.”

“They don’t make baby Jaegers,” Pepper points out. “Although it would be very cute if they did.”

Adam pretends to be a robot, moving his arms around stiffly. “I Am Baby Jaeger. My Name Is Nappy Tantrum. All Kaiju Fear Me.”

Pepper laughs and ducks underneath Adam’s swinging arm. He tries to catch her with the other hand, but Pepper dodges easily.

“But we’re best friends,” Brian says. “Doesn’t that count for something?”

“You can’t fit four people in a Jaeger,” Wensleydale says.

“And I don’t want to be drift compatible with you,” Pepper says, looking at Brian and his poking stick.

“I’d like to be a Jaeger pilot,” Adam says suddenly. Pepper turns towards him.

“Really?” She asks. “You want to be a ranger?”

Adam shrugs, suddenly self-conscious. “I’ve been thinking about it.”

“Do you think you could find someone to be compatible with?” Pepper asks, stepping closer.

“Yes,” Adam says, looking straight at her. “Don’t you want to be in a Jaeger?”

“I want to kill Kaiju,” Pepper says, and balls up her fists. “I’m going to be the best Kaiju fighter that there ever was.”

“BuenaKai teachings worked well on you then,” Wensleydale says wearily.

“Shove off.” Pepper says.

“Well I’m going to demand that they make a four-person Jaeger, and we’ll pilot it,” Brian says, as if he can talk directly to Stacker Pentecost. “And we’ll call it.... Hogback Woods.”

“Very imaginative,” Pepper says sarcastically.

“What, do you think Adam is going to come up with a better name?” Brian asks. “His dog is called Dog!”

“He suits it!” Adam protests lamely. “Wensleydale, tell him.”

“Really?” Wensleydale pushes his glasses up his nose. “You’re coming to me for advice about stupid names?”

“At least you’re not called Pippin Galadriel Moonchild,” Pepper says, rolling her eyes. “My mum might as well have called me Frodo Gandalf Mooncup.”

“What’s a mooncup?” Brian asks

“I’ll tell you when you’re older,” Pepper replies, just as the rain siren starts to scream from the village. “Oh bollocks.”

“Quick!” Wensleydale is already on his bike. “Town’s at least half an hour away.”

“There’s the pillbox,” Adam says. “We can go there. It’s nearer.”

The pillbox is a relic from World War 2, a shelter made of concrete buried deep in the woods. They were supposed to be used if England was ever invaded, but now they’re mainly used as toilets.

“Do you think we’ll get there in time?” Wensleydale asks.

Adam doesn’t reply. Instead he jumps onto his bike, turning around to face the Them. “Well? Come on!”

Pepper clambers onto the back of Adam’s bike without thinking about it, wrapping her arms around his stomach. She can feel his heartbeat when she presses her cheek against his back, a slow steady thud, which makes her feel a lot less panicked.

“Race you!” Brian says, already shooting off towards the pillbox, bike rattling over tree roots, Wensleydale following after him.

“Moron,” Adam says under his breath. “Ready, Pep?”

“Just go already,” Pepper says, and hears Adam snort before he sets off.

Pepper can hear the thunderstorm behind them, and she doesn’t have to turn around to know that Hogback Woods are Kaiju blue. She clings to Adam as they careen around tree stumps, the bike groaning as they go off the path.

Wensleydale and Brian beat them to the pillbox, but only by seconds. Pepper can see them shoving their bikes inside the entrance, jackets held over their heads to protect themselves from the rain. She opens her mouth to speak, but a clap of thunder interrupts her.

“Get inside!” Adam stops the bike, one foot in the dirt to keep them steady.

Pepper climbs off, dizzy from nerves and speed. “Are you coming—”

Adam pushes her hard towards the entrance. “Go!”

Pepper rushes towards the pillbox just as the heavens open above them, rain thundering against the earth. She ducks into the opening of the shelter and turns to see if Adam made it in time.

He’s standing still in the rain, head tilted up towards the sky, Kaiju blue splattering against his cheeks. Pepper almost runs out to him, to take him by the hand and drag him inside, but she realises that the rain isn’t hurting Adam.

He’s fine. No skin blistering, no screams of pain, just a boy standing in a rainstorm.

Adam turns towards the pillbox, and Pepper shrinks away into the darkness, glad that he can’t see her. She can hear Wensleydale and Brian talking in low voices in the cavern, the sound echoing off the walls.

Pepper presses herself up against the cold wall, listening to the roar of the rain outside. She thinks she must have imagined it, that of course Adam wasn’t in the storm unharmed, it was just a trick of the light, she’s going mad, when Adam steps into the shelter.

He shakes rain droplets from his hair, rubbing his face with the back of his hand, and Pepper squeaks because she has no idea how Adam survived.

“Pep?” Adam asks into the darkness.

Pepper’s breath catches in her throat, and she unpeels herself from the wall, playing a game of pretend.

“I can’t believe Brian and Wensleydale beat us!” She says nasally. “We were going much faster.”

Adam laughs, stepping towards her. She tries not to flinch away. “It’s because you were heavy on the back.”

“Piss off,” Pepper says, ignoring how Adam’s eyes are so bright in the dim light. “Let’s go wait with the others.”

“Let’s,” Adam agrees, and when his hand brushes against hers, it stings.

*

It’s a few Saturdays later when Pepper’s mum knocks on her bedroom door and announces Pepper has a visitor. Pepper is lounging on her bed, flicking through homework that she’ll copy off Wensleydale in Monday morning’s free period.

“A visitor?” Pepper sits up just as her mother pushes open the door, revealing her and Adam standing there. “Oh, hello.”

“Hi,” Adam says, raising a hand. “Your mum let me in.”

“He’s very polite,” her mother says, pushing Adam into the room. “Tell me if you need anything! I have green tea freshly made—”

“He’s fine.” Pepper says through gritted teeth. “You can go now.”

Her mother pulls a face and disappears back downstairs into the pub. Pepper turns to Adam and raises her eyebrow. “Here for a reason?”

Adam shrugs. “Wanted to see you.”

“You’ll see me at school in two days’ time,” Pepper says, but makes space for him on the bed anyway.

She’s tried to block the image of Adam in the rain out of her mind. It must have just been a mistake. Maybe Kaiju rain causes visions.

Adam sits down beside her, staring at her bedroom walls. He’s never visited her bedroom before, but Pepper has been to his house lots of times. His parents think she’s very funny, but they tend to laugh at the things she says seriously rather than at her jokes.

“I like your posters,” Adam says.

“Thanks,” Pepper replies. “They were from the newspaper.”

She’s added to her collection since she first moved in. She has a Yancy Becket shrine stuck to her wardrobe, which her mother thinks is stupid, and lots of pictures of Mako Mori above her head. In every single one, Mako has a different hair colour shade, which Pepper thinks is extremely impressive.

“Do you want to be like them?” Adam asks.

It’s a question that Pepper has never thought of before. She imagines herself, small inside a Jaeger, crushing Kaiju with her bare fists.

“Yes,” she says. “And so do you?”

Adam nods, picking at a loose thread on the sleeve of his jumper. “Do you like living here?” he asks suddenly.

Pepper blinks. “Yes,” she says automatically. “It’s better than a tent in the middle of the woods.”

“But don’t—” Adam catches himself. “Don’t you wish you could see more?”

Pepper looks up at the wall, where there are photographs of Jaegers hiding out amongst tropical plants in Brazil, having snowball fights on the Russian base, emerging out of the Bondi Beach surf like Daniel Craig.

“Yes,” she says again, surprising herself.

“Cool,” Adam says, nodding, and then, “I think we should apply for the 10-13 Jaeger program.”

“You what?” Pepper says, eyes wide. “You want to _apply_?”

“Just,” Adam turns towards her suddenly, and Pepper doesn’t have a chance to speak before Adam is spilling out words, “We both want to be rangers, right? We both want to see the world, and you want to beat up Kaiju and I want to— Well, I want to be out there, and I know we’re drift compatible, more than Wensleydale, more than Brian, I know I’m compatible with you.”

He’s staring at her imploringly with bright blue eyes. Pepper looks into them and feels a tug in her stomach, like something pulling her towards home.

“Do you really think we’re compatible?” she asks.

Adam reaches out and takes her hand, and Pepper feels his cold skin against hers. “I know we are.”

They sit there for a moment, holding each other, before Pepper speaks.

“Okay,” she says, and starts the Apocalypse.

*

Not many people in Lower Tadfield have ever signed up for the Jaeger Program. The Kaiju are almost considered someone else’s problem, something for the people who live near the sea to deal with. Sure, they listen to the reports on the radio, and watch the BBC specials, and donate to the relief funds, but it doesn’t feel real. It’s something happening “over there,” where “other people” are.

Still, Kajal Baddicombe applied with her boyfriend and was sent back, breaking up on the car ride home, and Niamh Reidy got as far as Manila before falling out of the program after she lost drift connection in the Molten Flayer Jaeger. Pepper watched people go, and she watched them come back again.

Still, it wasn’t like she and Adam will fare any better, is it?

*

To apply to be a Jaeger pilot whilst under the age of 18 you need two things. A partner you think you’re drift compatible with, and your parent’s permission. Pepper forges her mother’s signature on the paperwork as easily as she can breathe, perfecting the way her mother draws flowers over the dots in her i’s.

Deirdre Young signs Adam’s paperwork, glasses perched on the tip of her nose as she neatly writes her own name. Adam and Pepper hover silently beside her, so close that Pepper’s hand keeps nudging Adam’s.

“Are you sure?” Deirdre asks, looking at them both.

“Yes,” Adam says, and takes the papers from her before she can change her mind.

*

Exactly three weeks later, Pepper is shaken awake by her mother. It takes her a moment to realise what’s happening, but not before she smacks her mother across the chest with the back of her hand in shock.

“Ow!” Her mother drops the envelope she was holding onto Pepper’s face. “It’s your mother!”

“I thought you were an attacker!” Pepper complains, sitting upright in bed. “What were you shaking me for?”

“You’ve got post,” her mum says. “With a Jaeger Program seal. Have you been sending them letters?”

“No,” Pepper lies, examining the envelope.

_Pippin Moonchild_

_The Axe and Bottle: Flat B_

_Lower Tadfield_

_OX4 666_

“I need to go see Adam,” she says, climbing out of bed.

“Why?” Her mum asks. “What have you been up to?”

“Nothing,” Pepper says, “I just need to go see him.”

“Pippin—”

“It’s Pepper,” Pepper reminds her mother, already throwing off her pyjamas. “I’ll be back before you know it.”

“I always know where you are,” her mother tells her, and Pepper ignores her, because she’s sure her mother has gone mad.

*

Pepper still doesn’t have a bike so she runs to Adam’s house, shoes slapping against the pavement. She almost trips over R.P. Tyler’s dog on her way there, but narrowly misses, vaulting over Shutzi the sausage dog instead.

“Hooligan!” Tyler calls after her. “You’re a public menace!”

“I know!” Pepper yells back, and sprints the final meters to Adam’s front gate.

Normally Dog is sniffing around in the garden, but today he’s nowhere to be seen. Pepper unlocks the front gate and marches up to the front door, hammering on it with her closed fist. It feels like an eternity before Mr. Young answers the door, marmalade in his moustache.

“Hello young Pepper—” he starts, and Pepper barges past him. “Hey!”

Pepper bursts into the dining room where Adam and his family are eating breakfast. Adam is just breaking open a boiled egg when Pepper slams her envelope onto the table, slightly out of breath.

“Here,” she says. “Look.”

Adam drops his spoon onto his plate and picks up the envelope with eggy fingers. “When did this come?!”

“This morning,” Pepper says, unable to stop the smile that’s grown on her face.

Adam looks up just as Mr Young comes blustering into the room. “Now Pepper, you can’t just walk into people’s houses at breakfast—”

“Did any post come today, Dad?” Adam interrupts.

Mr Young blinks. “And Adam, you can’t just interject when people are talking—”

“Is there any post?” Adam repeats. “Please, it’s important.”

“It’s the Jaeger Program,” Deidre adds, making a facial expression that clearly says that she thinks they’ve been rejected.

Mr. Young sighs and goes to the letter holder. “Let me see. Bill, bill, television licence needs renewing, and.... Yes, a letter from the Jaeger Program.”

Adam makes an unusual squeaking noise and jumps out of his seat. He goes to grab the letter from his father, who holds it high above his head.

“Magic word?”

“Please,” Adam begs, and Mr Young hands him the letter, which Adam snatches away. “Come on, Pepper!”

Pepper follows Adam eagerly, clutching her own letter between her hot hands. Adam runs up the stairs towards his bedroom, their footsteps making the light fittings in the house shake. Pepper can feel her heart in her throat, and she’s glad she wasn’t the one eating breakfast because she thinks she might have sicked it up in nervousness.

Adam throws open his bedroom door, and Dog looks up from where he had been sleeping on Adam’s pillow. The two children collapse onto the bed, each tearing open their envelope wordlessly. At some point, Adam’s hand finds Pepper’s arm, and they cling to each other as they read.

_Dear Pippin Moonchild,_

_We are delighted to inform you that you have been accepted onto the first stages of the 10–13 Jaeger Program with your potential drift compatible partner ADAM YOUNG._

_We would like you and your drift compatible partner to attend a compulsory introduction and preliminary tests at the British Jaeger Offices in London on Date. The address is printed on the back of this letter._

_If you complete these tests, you will be sent to the next stage of the program, living away from home, in a designated base. Please pack all necessary items, as you may not return home for a while._

_Many congratulations,_

_Gabriel_

_Director of the Jaeger Program_

Pepper squeezes Adam’s hand so tight that she thinks she might break all the bones in it.

“We got in,” she whispers.

Adam rolls towards her on the bed, smile splitting his face in two. “We made it.”

They press their foreheads against each other, and Pepper can smell strawberry jam on Adam’s breath. She’s breathing fast, from running and excitement, and she just wants to lay here, curled up with Adam, forever.

It’s almost perfect.

*

In years to come, people will speak legends of the argument between Pepper and Goldberry Moonchild. According to Brian, he could hear it all the way from his parents’ basement, and make out all the swearing.

*

The British Jaeger offices are in London, so they get the train.

The GWR train is filled with students and military personal, both looking equally harrowed. Oxford University refuses to close despite the Kaiju, stating that they’re “training the future academics who will defeat the Kaiju, and anyway, the University has been around for 923 years and we’re not closing down for a few giant lizards.”

The Polytechnique where Pepper’s mother works has been converted into a makeshift hospital and is surprisingly doing better than when it was actually a school. Her mother does keep trying to bless the patients with healing crystals, which are less effective than IV drips and prescription medication.

Adam throws his rucksack down onto a window seat and follows it, sighing to himself as he gets settled. Pepper sits down beside him, pulling her own rucksack onto her lap and resting her forehead against it for a few seconds. The world has been so loud lately.

Arthur Young had offered to drive them there, but Pepper and Adam had both refused. Most people have given up their cars by now, but Mr. Young refuses for reasons that he won’t disclose to his wife or his son. The car sits in front of their house, collecting flyers about DOING YOUR BIT and pigeon excrement.

“I’ve never been to London,” Adam says suddenly. He’s looking out the window, although they’re still in Tadfield Station so all there is to see is a Puccino’s Café and a homeless man doing a sick into a bin.

“Me neither,” Pepper says.

“Apparently the Thames is blue from Kaiju. You can see it from space.”

“You can see a lot of things from space,” Pepper says, “The Grand Canyon, for one.”

“You can see Mrs Henderson’s arse from space,” Adam says, and Pepper cackles dirtily. An old couple sitting nearby glares at them.

“If we get through the introduction and the tests, we’ll never get to see her again,” Adam says.

“Or anyone else,” Pepper says, scratching at the burn she got on her wrist from trying to make pancakes on a campfire by herself when she was 5.

The station controller blows his whistle from outside, and the train jerks into motion. Pepper grips her backpack as they pull out of the station, disappearing into country fields full of bedraggled sheep before she can blink.

“At least we have tickets booked tonight,” Pepper says, “if we fail.”

“We’re not going to fail,” Adam replies.

“How do you know?” Pepper asks. “You’re not psychic.”

“I just know,” Adam says and taps his forehead. “In here.”

“Alright, weirdo,” Pepper says and winces at the train horn blare.

There’s a commotion from the carriage doorway, and both Adam and Pepper peer around to see what’s going on. A woman with long, brown hair and enormous spectacles is fighting with a duffle bag, her boyfriend trying to help her but causing more chaos.

“Should we help?” Adam whispers, just as the woman manages to shove the bag into an overhead locker.

“We should have gone first class,” the woman’s boyfriend says, sitting down opposite Pepper. “We’re going to be trapped with the rest of the cadets on the next train journey.”

“I’m not sitting in first class with conservatives,” the woman replies snarkily, and sits down with a flounce next to Adam.

“My father would have paid—”

“Your father is a Tory,” the woman says, and then blinks at the sight of Adam and Pepper. “And there are children here, so we are not getting into this now.”

“We can block our ears if you want,” Adam says. “You can carry on fighting.”

“Let’s not,” the man says hastily before the woman can speak. “Let’s be quiet for five minutes.”

The woman huffs and pushes her glasses up her nose. “Fine.”

The man gives Pepper a tense-lipped smile. “Where are you two off to, then?”

“Jaeger offices,” Pepper replies and the adults both sit up straight.

“Have you been accepted into the program?” the woman asks.

Adam nods. “We got the letter two weeks ago.”

“We work there,” the man says, motioning towards his girlfriend. “Me and Anathema.”

“I work for the K-Science department,” Anathema says. “Newton works under Sergeant Shadwell.”

She leans across the table to inspect the two of them. “Your eyes are extraordinary,” she tells Adam. “What an unusual colour.”

“My mum’s are the same colour,” Adam says, even though Pepper knows that they aren’t.

Anathema leans back into her seat, tapping her finger against her mouth thoughtfully. “Be good in the dark.”

“That sounds suspicious,” Newton says. “Who are you sneaking around in the dark with?”

“Mostly Gabriel,” Anathema says, and Newton makes a sound like a dying ostrich. “For science!”

“You know Gabriel?” Pepper says. “He sent out the letters to us.”

“Oh yeah.” Anathema waves a hand. “Aziraphale writes them and Gabriel signs them off.”

“Have you ever met Doctor Aziraphale?” Adam asks.

“Yes,” Anathema says, “Why?”

“What’s he like?” Adam asks, his voice trying to sound casual. Pepper frowns; he’s never been interested in K-Science before.

“Kind,” Anathema says. “Enjoys his home comforts.”

“Yells at me when I touch his stuff,” Newton adds, sounding sad. “I accidentally tore the corner of one of his papers and he’s never trusted me since.”

“Not many people trust you, darling,” Anathema says, patting Newton’s hand. “It’s the Tory in you.”

Newton glares, and Pepper settles down to listen to them argue for the rest of the journey.

*

The British Jaeger Program is being held in the All Souls Langham Place church. People are already queuing outside when Pepper and Adam get there, and it’s weird to see so many people standing two-by-two. They join the back of the line, shrugging off their rucksacks and storing them by their feet.

“I feel like we’re about to get on the Ark,” Adam says. “ _The animals went in two-by-two, hurrah, hurrah…_ ”

“I didn’t realise I was back in assembly,” Pepper says. “Your singing is awful.”

“I was once baby Jesus in the Nativity,” Adam says, ignoring her. “And one time, Brian was a shepherd, but he kept hitting his flock with his crook, so they took it off him.”

“If I’d been Mary, I’d have hit the angel with something,” Pepper replies. “Random glowing man appears and tells me I’m pregnant? I’d have slapped him one.”

“Of course you would,” Adam says, and Pepper presses lightly on his foot with her own.

Once, she’d broken a boy’s toes by stamping on his foot repeatedly with all her weight. In her defence, he had been picking on the younger kids, but her headteacher hadn’t seen it that way. The boy had surgery, and Pepper was suspended for the week.

She spent the week at a Healing and Medication course with her mother and broke her arm trying to escape out the third-floor window.

Adam zips up his jacket to brace himself against the icy wind, and Pepper does the same, the two of them huddling close together. The line is moving slowly, and every so often they have to kick their bags forward to keep their spaces in the line.

“What do you think the test will be like?” Adam asks.

Pepper shrugs. “Maybe they’ll link up our brains. See if we can read each other’s thoughts.”

“I don’t like the sound of that.”

“I reckon I can do it already,” Pepper says and closes her eyes. “You’re thinking about... Dog, and what you want for tea.”

“Ding ding!” Adam says. “You got it.”

Pepper opens her eyes. “See?” she says. “Nothing to worry about.”

“Hmm,” Adam says, not sounding so sure.

*

The director of the program, Gabriel, turns out to be a tall man in a crisp white suit, who smiles shark-like at the children as they pile into the hall. He’s joined by a shorter person with a scowl permanently etched onto their face and a name tag that reads BEELZEBUB.

“Welcome!” Gabriel announces once everyone is settled, Adam and Pepper sitting at the very back of the room where nobody can see them. “I’m glad that you all could make it.”

Beelzebub makes a noise like a snort.

“This is the 10–13 Jaeger program, where we accept students in the aforementioned age bracket and train them to become pilots. However!”

Gabriel casts an eye over the group.

“That doesn’t mean you will be in a Jaeger. If you’re under the age of 16 then you are forbidden to be in a Jaeger or enter the drift. But if you pass all our tests, and do well on our exams, then maybe, maybe, you will be accepted further into the program.”

“78% of 10-13 students drop out within the first three months,” Gabriel says, and smiles rather like a shark. “So if you miss your parents right now, or your pet, or your friends, then we suggest you leave the room. You will not do well here.”

Nobody stands up. Pepper looks at Adam, who pulls a face. Pepper pulls one back, crossing her eyes and sticking out her tongue. Adam grins.

“Wonderful,” Gabriel says, clasping his hands over his stomach. “We will now place you on a train to travel to Armageddon base. I then invite you all to partake in the first test with Sergeant Shadwell.”

“Don’t die,” Beelzebub adds, and Pepper doesn’t know if they’re serious.

*

The train journey goes as well as planned with hundreds of children away from their parents for the first time. When they finally get off, on a small island near the Folkestone Coast, Pepper smells of sick and loneliness.

*

Sergeant Shadwell has a dodgy Scottish accent and a coat that has lived through two world wars. Pepper doesn’t like him instantly, but then again, she doesn’t like most men.

They’re standing in front of an indoor jungle gym—Snakes and Ladders with more exposed metal. Pepper shifts from one foot to the other, and Adam presses himself against the side of her. He’s warm, and fizzing with excitement.

“Now then,” Shadwell says, “This is your first test. If you fail, you’re out on your arse.”

Pepper looks at the jungle gym and her fingers itch with the urge to climb.

“In your pairs, one of you will be blindfolded.” Shadwell covers his eyes with his gnarled hand theatrically. “And the other will call out directions. I want your blindfolded lad to get the entire way from here to there back wall without falling.”

The group turns to whisper to one another. Pepper looks at Adam, who is biting at his bottom lip. She thinks back to the playground at the back of the pub, and of the structures they made in Hogback Woods.

“We can do this.” She mouths to him. Adam nods.

“Choose in your pair who will be blindfolded,” Shadwell says, tossing scraps of fabric to each pair. “And I will choose who goes first.”

Pepper catches the blindfold and runs the fabric between her fingers, then hands it to Adam. “I’ll do it.”

Adam doesn’t say anything. Pepper nudges him, motioning with her hands. “Blindfold me.”

“Are you—” Adam starts, and then stops. “Turn around, then.”

Pepper faces the assault course, studying the ropes and twists and turns before Adam places the blindfold over her eyes. He ties it at the base of her skull in a bulbous knot that rubs against her scalp.

“Ow,” Pepper says.

“I can loosen it—”

Shadwell claps his hands together, startling them. “You get three chances, alright laddies? And… girlies. If your partner falls four times, you’re disqualified. Got it?”

“Yes Sergeant,” The group choruses.

“Good,” Shadwell says. “You two girls, with the hair. You’re first.”

Pepper listens as each couple take their turn, and cringes every time she hears the heavy thump of someone falling. The instructions their partners are giving are useless, and Pepper wishes that Adam was the one climbing, and she yelling at him.

There’s a huge crash as a boy falls off the structure. He must be heavy; Pepper thinks he might have just broken through the floor. Adam makes a noise that could be a laugh or a gasp, and Pepper wonders what happened.

“Four times and you’re out!” Shadwell calls gleefully.

“She never should have made him go upside down on that part,” Adam mutters a little too loudly. “What was she thinking?”

Pepper hears the footsteps of the couple approaching and shouts out in pain when they walk straight into her.

“Hey! I’m right here, you know!”

“Sorry,” the girl says, but she doesn’t sound it. “Maybe your partner should have given you better instructions.”

“I will, don’t worry,” Adam replies, and pulls Pepper aside. “Idiots.”

Shadwell tries clearing his throat and then dissolves into a coughing fit. “You- You next.”

Pepper blinks behind the blindfold, and then Adam’s hand is on her arm. “He’s pointing at us,” he whispers in her ear. “We’re next.”

“Remember, you’re just getting your partner from one end of the course to the other. No time limit. Yet.” Pepper can feel Shadwell’s grin.

Adam pushes Pepper into the starting position. She can feel the warmth of his hands against her back, comforting. Her breathing is louder in her head, as she waits in the dark. Is this what it’s like in the drift? Dark, and waiting for your partner?

“Go!” Shadwell calls, and Pepper lurches forward, feeling out with her hands.

“You can do this,” Adam calls. “Three steps, and you’ll find the ladder.”

She steps, one, two, three, and her hands hit cold metal. She pulls herself upright, foot kicking out for the second rung, and then she’s climbing.

“Swing yourself up over the top,” Adam says. “You have to cross a ladder walkway. Go on your tummy.”

“I’m not a snake,” Pepper says crossly, but goes flat anyway. She slides herself across the walkway using her hands, stomach dropping every time there’s a gap in the bars. She feels like she’s going to fall through, but she doesn’t.

“Good,” Adam says. “Pepper, you’re wicked.”

“I know,” she calls back, and keeps going.

*

It’s easy enough after that. Adam calls instructions and Pepper copies, throwing herself across monkey bars and clambering up the top of the metal structure without fear. It’s just a game after all, Pepper thinks. And Adam’s always been the best at games.

“You’re right at the end now,” Adam says, his voice faint. “Just climb down—”

“Ah-ah-ah,” Shadwell interrupts. It’s the first time he’s spoken since they started. “You see that oval marking on the floor, underneath where your girl is?”

“She’s not my girl,” Adam says. “And yes, I can.”

“Well that is a lake filled with man-eating crocodiles,” Shadwell says. “So she’s going to have jump for it.”

“It’s not a lake of man-eating crocodiles, though,” Adam points out. “It’s a grey bit on the floor.”

“You’ve got a bad imagination, lad,” Shadwell says, “and if she steps down into it, you’ll fail.”

“But I did the entire course!” Pepper yells from across the room.

“Doesn’t count!” Shadwell yells back. “So jump!”

“It’s going to be okay!” Adam calls to her. “Just jump as far as you can, okay? You’ll make it, I know you can.”

Pepper thinks of a very rude word inside her head and readjusts her position. Her palms are sweaty on the metal bars. At least it’s not a real lake of man-eating crocodiles. Pepper can’t swim.

“You can do it!” Adam says, and Pepper leaps.

For a moment, it feels like she’s flying. Like someone has taken hold of her by the middle and carried her, the wind rushing at her face. And then she loses momentum and crashes to the ground onto the squeaky laminate floor.

The room has erupted into cheers, however, and Pepper rolls onto her back, the world still in darkness.

“That was brilliant!” Adam yells, and she can hear him coming closer, his footsteps slapping against the floor. “You jumped so far!”

“Of course I did,” Pepper says, trying to undo the knot on her blindfold. “I’m good at jumping.”

“You’re good at everything.” Adam drops down beside her and his hands overtake hers. He pulls the blindfold off and Pepper is exposed to the bright light and Adam’s smiling face.

“Well then,” Shadwell says, surrounded by the group of children. “You’re the first couple ever to finish the entire course without incident.”

Adam punches Pepper on the arm, pleased. Pepper smiles back stupidly. With the blindfold off she can see the couple who barged into them earlier. The boy is bigger than she expected, broad shouldered with a buzz cut and a split lip. His partner, a shorter girl with cropped red hair, glares at them over her purple glasses.

They walk back over to the group, and Adam looks at the girl. “I guess I am good at instructions after all.”

“Go away,” the boy says. He’s going through early puberty and his voice, while low, cracks at the end. “Or I’ll make you.”

“Without her helping you?” Adam motions towards the girl. “Oh wait, she made you fall off a ladder.”

“Well it’s easy to make a little monkey dance for you,” the girl snaps, and the air is sucked out of the room in an instant.

Both Pepper and Adam move at exactly the same time, Pepper for the girl and Adam for her partner. Pepper manages to tackle the girl to the ground, and Adam to get a good punch in, before Shadwell is dragging them off by the scruffs of their necks.

“No fighting!” he barks, and Pepper thrashes in his grip.

“You didn’t hear what she said!”

“I don’t care!” Shadwell says, and shakes her. “You and Adam, outside! You need cooling off, the pair of you.”

“Put me down, then!” Shadwell drops them both onto the floor. Adam makes for the girl again, and Shadwell drags him backwards.

“Outside!”

Pepper grabs hold of Adam’s arm before either of them can do something they’ll regret, and drags him through the double doors.

The corridor is quiet apart from the hum of electronics and far-away radios. Pepper goes to punch the wall, and then reconsiders because she doesn’t want to break her hand.

“I’m going to kill her.” She announces loudly. “When she’s sleeping. I’m going to smother her with a pillow.”

“I can’t believe he kicked us out!” Adam says, eyes flashing dangerously. “She was so mean—She can’t say those things to you.”

He turns around and storms off, and Pepper has to chase after him to catch up.

“Where are you going?” she asks.

“To find the outside,” Adam says.

“I don’t even know where we are.” Pepper looks around. “How did we even come in?”

“I don’t know.”

Pepper rubs her eyes. “I can’t even believe that was the first test. And that so many people fell. And that they let people like that into the program.”

Adam doesn’t say anything. He’s facing away, and Pepper resists the urge to shake him to get his attention.

“Look,” Adam says, and points, “Anathema.”

Pepper follows the path of his finger and spots Anathema in the distance, talking to someone on a phone held flat to her mouth. She’s wearing a white lab coat, the cuffs stained with dirt, and her name tag reads DEVICE.

“She looks busy,” Pepper says, just as Anathema catches sight of them, and her eyebrows bounce upwards.

She ends her phone call, shoving the phone into her top pocket, and grins at them. “My train buddies.”

“Hello,” Pepper says. “Why are you wearing a lab coat?”

“I’m doing science things,” she says. “What are you two doing?”

“We just passed Shadwell’s test,” Adam says. “And then a girl was racist to Pepper so we got into a fight.”

“Huh,” Anathema says, and then tilts her head to one side. “Do you want to help me with something?”

“Yes,” Adam says before Pepper can say no.

“What is it?” Pepper asks, wrinkling her nose.

Anathema smiles. “You’ll see.”

*

Anathema leads them through a warren of identical corridors until Pepper can’t work out if she’s coming or going. They stop outside an official-looking door, with a keypad and retinal scan.

“We need to make sure that nobody unauthorised comes in,” Anathema explains, covering up her code as she types it in.

“Or out,” Adam whispers to Pepper, and she shivers.

The doors let out a loud beep, and Anathema shoulders them open, motioning for Adam and Pepper to walk through. Adam goes first, and at his gasp, Pepper follows after, wanting to see what he’s looking at.

“Bloody hell,” Pepper gasps. “That’s a _Jaeger_.”

“Only the head,” Anathema corrects, but she’s pleased nonetheless.

The Jaeger head is around 17 feet tall and looks like a squatter version of a bicycle helmet. The glass paneling is tinted blue, and when Pepper peers closer, she can see the mechanisms inside.

In front of the head are various screens and keyboards with electricity buzzing around them. Anathema scans her ID pass on one of the panels, and the Jaeger head comes to life, everything lighting up.

“This is our test Jaeger,” Anathema says. “Our students test their drift compatibility here, with Sarah.”

“Sarah?” Pepper asks.

“Here, I’ll show you.” Anathema presses a button, and the cockpit opens with a hydraulic hiss.

“What?” Pepper says. “We can go inside?” 

“Do you want to?” Anathema asks, teasing.

“Yeah!” Pepper says, and turns to Adam. “We both do!”

Adam is looking at the cockpit curiously. “Yeah,” he says. “We want to see inside.”

Anathema leads them up into the Jaeger, pointing out various bits of equipment that make the Jaeger run. Pepper wants to touch everything, wants to feel the cold metal beneath her hands, but keeps them firmly shoved inside her jacket to resist temptation.

“This is Sarah.” Anathema points to a brain floating in a jar of fluid.

The plaque below reads _THIS IS SARAH. SHE DONATED HER MIND SO THAT YOU COULD TRAIN. TELL ME HER FAVORITE CANDY BAR._

“That’s a real brain?” Pepper whispers.

“Yup.” Anathema presses her palm against the glass, and the brain twitches. “Sarah’s taught the best: the Becket’s, Pentecost, Hansen… She’s a clever girl.”

“What did she die of?” Adam asks.

“Why do you need to know?” Anathema smiles and knocks on the glass with her knuckle. “Hey Sarah, you have guests.”

The brain twitches again, and the lights illuminating her tank flicker. Pepper steps closer to Adam.

“But we’re not going to be using Sarah today,” Anathema says, and turns to Pepper and Adam. “We’re going to be using you.”

“What?!” Both of them blurt out at once.

“I’m not giving you my brain,” Pepper says, disgusted.

Anathema laughs, holding up her hands. “I promise I’m not going to be stealing your brain,” she says. “I just want to see if under-13’s can handle the drift.”

“People die in the drift,” Adam says. “And Gabriel said that people in the 10–13 program weren’t allowed to be in a Jaeger.”

“Gabriel doesn’t run everything.” Anathema waves Adam’s comment aside. “People drop out of the drift, but that feels like a roller coaster drop, you know?”

Pepper and Adam shake their heads.

“Huh,” Anathema says. “Okay, so it’s like, when you’re lying in bed and your stomach dips, and it wakes you up.”

“That’s a gross feeling,” Pepper says.

“But it doesn’t kill you,” Anathema says, looking at Adam. “Still feeling apprehensive?”

“Yes,” Adam says. “Can me and Pepper talk in private?”

“Be my guest,” Anathema says, and Adam drags Pepper out of earshot, so that they’re pressed against the glass of the cockpit.

“This is insane,” Adam hisses.

“I know,” Pepper hisses back. “What’s going on? This can’t be legal.”

“She was crazy on the train, she’s crazy now,” Adam whispers. “Do you want to do it though?”

“When else are we going to get the chance?”

“We might end up as a brain in a jar. I could be the next Sarah.” Adam shudders.

“You’d make a beautiful Sarah,” Pepper says, and Adam gives her a look. “What?!”

“I didn’t say anything!” Adam protests, and scratches the back of his head. “Are you sure?”

“I think so,” Pepper replies.

Adam reaches out for her hand and squeezes it, then turns back to Anathema.

“We’ll do it,” He announces.

“Wonderful,” Anathema says, and smiles. “Let’s get you hooked up.”

*

By the time Anathema has hooked them up to the cockpit, they have an audience.

“This is very stupid,” Gabriel says, arms folded. “Your little plan isn’t going to work.”

Anathema hums as she locks Pepper into place. “You don’t know that.”

“I can examine previous data and—”

Beelzebub blows air out through their mouth, making a fart sound and interrupting Gabriel. Newton, who is hiding in the corner away from the machines, stifles a laugh.

“Thank you, Beelzebub,” Gabriel says haughtily. “Much appreciated.”

“No problem,” Beelzebub replies. “I’m just interested to see what happens when you put toddlers in the drift.”

“We’re not toddlers,” Pepper calls down. “I’m eleven.”

“A toddler.” Beelzebub reaffirms. “Barely conscious.”

Pepper bristles and Adam laughs.

“I’m all ready,” Anathema says, clicking Adam’s harness into place. “You two okay?”

They both nod.

Anathema steps out of the cockpit and locks the doors. Pepper feels them clunk into place and glances over at Adam. He’s looking back at her, and she gives him a nervous smile.

“If I die, tell Dog I loved him,” Adam says.

“If you die, then I’ll die too,” Pepper points out.

“Huh,” Adam says, as if he hadn’t thought of that, before they’re plunged into darkness.

“What?!” Pepper calls out, trying to peer through the glass to see the adults below.

“INITIALISING DRIFT HANDSHAKE IN FIVE… FOUR… THREE… TWO…”

Pepper waits for the roller coaster drop.

“ONE.”

The drift is quiet and then—

_Pepper is five years old and her mother and her boyfriend are screaming at each other and the stench of weed is so strong that it could knock her off her feet and the boyfriend lunges for her mother’s neck and screams and screams until she’s kicked and—_

_Now she’s seven and Arthur Young is standing there on the phone and he’s crying and it’s the first time she’s ever seen a grown-up cry and it’s her dad and when he puts the phone down all blotchy faced he says that Auntie Lydia is dead and the tears don’t stop even when she runs forward to hug him with Adam’s arms—_

_Ten years old and cornered behind the bike sheds with the older boys and she can smell weed and cigarettes again and when she tries to wriggle away they punch her in the stomach and she screams again and flails out with hands and feet and they laugh and laugh until she bites the ringleader on the arm and clings on until she draws blood—_

_And then she’s Adam, watching herself attack a group of boys, and she’s running to help, she’s running so fast that she feels like she’s flying, and when she yells, her voice is Adam’s, telling them to stop hurting her, and when he punches the smallest one in between the legs, he doubles over like he’s been shot—_

Pepper gasps for air like she’s drowning at sea and pushes herself up out of the memories. She can feel Adam everywhere, between her skin, inside her brain, she is herself and she is Adam all at the same time.

“Oh!” she speaks into the darkness, and Adam answers back.

“I’m here,” he says, and Pepper knows that everything is alright.

*

Even when Anathema closes the drift between Pepper and Adam, she can still feel him in her head. It feels like Adam has been there forever, tucked away in the corner of her mind. In the darkness of the Jaeger cockpit, Pepper turns and sees Adam’s eyes glowing in the darkness.

“Hi,” Pepper says.

“That was insane,” Adam says, and then shakes his head like a dog. “Wow— I saw everything.”

“Pervert,” Pepper replies, just as the lights flick back on and Anathema bursts through excitedly with Newton behind her.

“Did you see that?!” she says, out of breath. “The link?!”

“We felt it—“ Pepper starts, as Anathema starts to unhook her from the structure.

“That was the strongest pilot link I’ve ever seen! You two are—Newt, don’t touch that button—You both are incredible.”

Pepper stumbles out of the harness and Anathema catches her, still babbling. “Your first drift—The connection was so strong—If I hadn’t cut the cord you could have lasted for hours—I need to write this down.”

Adam climbs out of his harness, stretching his shoulders. Pepper feels the clicking of his bones inside herself.

Anathema grabs hold of Pepper and Adam’s hands, dragging them out of the Jaeger cockpit. Pepper blinks at the white light of the room and feels Adam similarly wince. Gabriel and Beelzebub are still standing there, looking slightly alarmed.

“That was—” Gabriel starts, and Beelzebub interrupts.

“Fucking insane,” they say with a grin, leaning forward with their arms crossed. “You two have never drifted before? Never used illegal pilot equipment?”

“They’re children, where would they get illegal equipment from?” Gabriel snaps, irritable.

“They’re almost teenagers,” Beezlebub says, “but seriously. First time in the drift?”

“Yes,” Pepper says. “I don’t get what the big deal is.”

Anathema darts forward, inspecting the readings on the electronic graphs and charts in front of her. “Yes.... Yes! Strongest drift connection we’ve ever seen. I knew it!”

She turns to face them, clapping her hands together then throwing them out wordlessly towards Pepper and Adam. “The future!”

“So you’re saying we should start recruiting children?” Gabriel asks.

“I’d need to do more tests—” Anathema starts, as Newton steps forward to look at the graphs, “Don’t! You’ll mess it all up.”

“I won’t mess it up,” Newton mutters, pushing his glasses up his nose. He steps away from them, anyway.

“I think we’re seeing something truly special here, though.” Anathema continues. “Adam and Pepper. Boost them through the system.”

“I’m sorry?” Gabriel says, and Beelzebub cackles. “They’ve only just passed the induction!”

“We need pilots with connections like these!” Anathema says. “Half of our Jaeger pilots are dropping out of drift at random; with these two, who knows what we could do?”

“This is a lawsuit waiting to happen.” Gabriel snaps.

Anathema studies him over the top of her glasses, and then seems to remember Adam and Pepper are still standing there. She motions Gabriel, Beelzebub, and Newton closer, dropping her voice to a whisper that Pepper strains to hear.

“You know we don’t have enough pilots,” she murmurs. “We have to take everyone we can get.”

“Crowley won’t want to use children,” Newton says.

“What other choice do we have?” Anathema asks. “Gabriel, please understand me. Make the right choice.”

“Nathan Lambert will be having words,” Gabriel replies, and then sighs. “Fine. I’ll promote them into the pilot training program. And get someone to inform their parents that they won’t be returning home for a while.”

Anathema makes a pleased noise. “You won’t regret it.”

“He will,” Beelzebub says, and turns to Adam and Pepper. “Hey kids?”

“What?” Adam says, and Pepper leans into him.

“Welcome to the Academy,” Beezlebub says, and when they smile, their teeth are black.

*

Pepper’s new bedroom is a dormitory with ten other girls of various ages, but all older than her. She stands in the doorway, holding her rucksack, looking at the beds that line the walls, and the assortment of girls who occupy them.

Adam is in the boys’ dormitory in the opposite corridor, the first time he has ever had to share a sleeping space with anyone. Pepper can feel his fear inside her stomach, making her feel sick. She doesn’t want to show weakness in front of these other girls, however.

“Which bed is mine?” she asks loudly.

The girls look up from their activities but none of them respond. Pepper bites her tongue to stop herself from yelling and steps into the room. Every eye is upon her, and Pepper feels about one foot tall, shrinking before them.

“At the end,” one of the girls says, finally.

She gestures with a pale hand at the bed by the shared bathrooms. It’s apparent why the bed is empty, but Pepper doesn’t say anything, walking over and dumping her rucksack onto it.

Truth be told, Pepper just wants to climb under the covers and go to sleep, but she can’t. Instead she sits down on the bed and kicks off her shoes, tucking them underneath the bed frame.

The dormitory door swings open, and a girl appears, still in her Jaeger under-suit. She’s already stripping it off as she walks towards her bed, and Pepper is given a full frontal view as the girl flings the under-suit onto her duvet.

“Six hours!” the girl announces. “Before my idiot partner severed the connection.”

There are several claps, a few murmured comments of congratulations. The girl mock bows, and then tugs on her jumper and jeans. She’s got blue hair chopped into a messy bob, and freckles. When she turns to look at Pepper, Pepper quickly looks away.

“You’re the wonder kid, huh?” the girl asks. “Strongest link in the drift they’ve ever seen?”

“Yeah,” Pepper says. “That’s me.”

“How old are you?” the girl asks. “Seven?”

One of the group snorts and Pepper glares. “I’m eleven.”

“Aw, double digits,” the girl says, and grins. “Like me. I’m sixteen. I’m Coraline, by the way.”

“Caroline?” Pepper says.

“Coral-line,” the girl spells out. “Think of the sea plant and you’re there.”

Pepper thought all the coral had died out years ago. “I’m Pepper. Like the stuff that makes you sneeze.”

“Cute.” Coraline sits down on the end of her bed, cuffing her jeans. “Welcome to the Thunderdome.”

“Thanks,” Pepper says, and Coraline flops backwards so she’s lying on the bed, staring up at the ceiling.

“Dinner is in an hour,” she says with a yawn. “Somebody wake me.”

“No chance,” a dark-skinned girl says, and Coraline flips her off before closing her eyes.

Pepper has never felt more out of her depth.

*

Dinner is held in the mess hall, and everybody eats together. Pepper spots Adam loitering by the waste disposal and rushes towards him, narrowly avoiding a bulldog plodding past.

“Hey,” she says, grabbing hold of his cold arm. “How are you?”

She can feel the relief flood through him. “Hey. Is your dorm as bad as mine?”

Pepper pulls a face, and Adam gives her a sad smile. “Yeah. I thought as much.”

“Everyone is so old,” Pepper says. “Literally, they’re all teenagers. It’s weird.”

“They smell, too,” Adam says. “Like Brian when his mum hasn’t forced him into the shower.”

“Gross,” Pepper says, as her stomach gurgles. “Let’s get food.”

They join the end of the queue, behind two older cadets playing a violent game of rock-paper-scissors. Pepper rolls her eyes at them, and Adam snorts.

“Do you think they told our parents we drifted?”

“I don’t know,” Adam says. “Maybe they didn’t, in case it worried them.”

“It all seems very… suspicious,” Pepper says, finally.

“I like suspicious,” Adam says. “We’re part of a conspiracy theory.”

“You would,” Pepper says, and then is violently shoved backwards by the boys in front. “Hey! Dickheads!”

“Ooooh!” The boys chorus sarcastically, pretending to be shocked. “Does mummy know you’re talking like this?”

“Shut up,” Pepper snaps. “Stop pushing me.”

“Aw,” one of the boys says, “stop pushing the little baby, guys.”

“We’re not babies!” Adam interrupts, pushing forward.

“We’re Jaeger pilots,” Pepper follows up, and the boys dissolve into laughter.

“Oh my god,” The boy with too much gel in his hair says, “you actually think you’re a pilot?”

“We’re in the program,” Pepper says.

“You don’t even have a Jaeger,” boy says, stepping closer. “You’re just kids. Playing pretend.”

Adam glares up at him, and Pepper can feel the loathing roll off him in waves. She catches hold of his arm, tugging him backwards.

“Aw, protecting your boyfriend?”

“He’s not my boyfriend!” Pepper says at once, and the boys cackle with laughter.

“Leave them alone,” a boy says from nearby. “Stop bothering them.”

“Fuck off, Bod,” the taller boy says. “We’re just showing them what the Jaeger program is really like.”

Adam is bubbling beside Pepper like a cauldron about to explode. Pepper turns towards him and freezes at Adam’s eyes flickering blue.

“Hey!” Someone barges between them before Adam can do anything. “No fighting in the lunch queue.”

“She started it,” the boy mutters, and Pepper looks up at the intruder and gulps. Nathan Lambert.

“Is that true, Ranger?” Nathan asks Pepper.

“No,” Pepper says.

Nathan looks at her and Adam, then back towards the boys. “Kitchen chores for the next week.”

“What?” The boy says. “Lambert that’s not fair—“

“Being a ranger isn’t fair,” Nathan says and points to the boys. “I expect to see you three tomorrow morning to …”

He turns to Pepper and Adam. “And you two, I’ll see you tomorrow night to …..”

Pepper glares. “We didn’t even do anything.”

Nathan folds his arms. “According to Sergeant Shadwell, you attacked another student.”

“She called Pepper names,” Adam says.

“I’m not listening to he-said-she-said,” Nathan says. “Tomorrow night, I expect both of you here to complete your chores. Just because you’re Jaeger pilots doesn’t mean you get to do whatever you like.”

“Fine,” Pepper says, and takes hold of Adam’s arm. “Let’s get dinner.”

They move away from Nathan, but she can still feel his eyes on their backs.

“Idiot,” Adam says.

“Typical man with too much power,” Pepper replies loftily, and it’s worth it for Adam’s snort.

*

That night, Pepper curls up against the wall in her bed, arms wrapped around herself for warmth. She can feel Adam’s heartbeat underneath her skin. The other girls are already asleep, and she can hear them making soft snoring noises and sighing as they roll over. Coraline is flat out on her back, one arm flung over the side of the bed as she snores.

Falling asleep comes almost by surprise; one moment she’s staring at the light underneath the door frame, and the next the world is darkness.

Pepper knows she’s in a cave before her brain creates the atmosphere, the sound of echoing dripping water and the smell of damp earth.

H E L L O

Pepper stumbles in shock, hands out in front of her to stop herself from falling, and she catches them on the jagged edge of the rock wall. She feels the blood split across her palm and cries out.

H E L L O

A voice, loud in the darkness, something not human. Pepper licks the blood from her hand and looks around for the source.

P E P P E R

“Hello?!” Pepper calls back. “This is a dream so I know you’re not real!”

The laugh that echoes around the cave is sadistic, making Pepper’s skin crawl. She glares at the darkness.

“You’re only laughing at me because you know it’s true,” she says. “You’re just a nightmare, and I’m going to wake up, and this will be over.”

Pepper carefully makes her way down into a sitting position on the wet stone, sticking her legs out in front of her. This is just a stupid dream, and it’ll be done with soon.

I KNOW WHERE YOU ARE

“On the floor,” Pepper answers. “With the worms. And the maggots.”

ARMAGEDDON BASE

Pepper rolls her eyes. “Yeah. Obviously.”

WE CAN SEE YOU

“You have friends?” Pepper asks. “I’m surprised.”

Although she can’t see the voice, she feels the smile that splits across its face, blue teeth sharpened by bone. Pepper hasn’t seen many horror movies, but she’s seen Chucky, and that’s a good enough basis.

SOON

“What’s soon?” Pepper asks.

YOU WILL SEE

“Looking forward to it,” Pepper says.

She’s dragged out of the dream just as easily as she fell into it, a popping in her ears, and then she’s staring up at the ceiling in the dormitory. Her palms are stinging, and she rolls over to face the other girls, looking at the blurred sleeping faces, the faint blue light underneath the door….

Blue. The teeth were blue. Kaiju blue.

“Oh,” Pepper says to herself, and falls asleep again.

*

Pepper wakes up when an alarm blares in the dorm room. She reaches out for Adam with her arm, but finds him awake in her head, groggy from sleep. It feels like he’s always taken up space inside her head.

She sits upright, rubbing her eyes, and watches the other girls roll out of bed, sleepily arguing with each other about breakfast and who is going to shower first. Coraline is laying with her feet against the wall, head hanging over the side of the bed.

“Good morning, Pepper Pot,” Coraline says to her. “Sleep well?”

Pepper raises and lowers one shoulder. Coraline grins and rolls herself upright.

“Yeah. It’s weird being in a new place.”

“I’m fine,” Pepper says, and throws back the covers. “I need to shower.”

“I’ll show you around,” Coraline says. “You’ll have to let the others shower first. It’s the way things work around here.”

Pepper folds her arms. “But I smell.”

“Well you’ll have to keep being stinky for a while longer.” Coraline swings herself out of bed. “Because woe betide anyone who gets between Yvaine and the shower in the mornings.”

Pepper pouts but goes along with it. She likes starting fights, but not with people she has to share a room with.

Instead, she climbs out of bed and opens up her backpack, pulling out a fresh pair of clothes. She looks up at the other girls, who are changing brazenly in front of one another, tossing their pyjamas onto their beds.

“Do you want me to hold up me towel?” somebody asks.

Pepper turns around to see a tall skinny girl with limp looking hair. She holds up a towel in front of her, pink and fraying.

“So you can change,” she explains.

Pepper studies her for a moment, wondering if it’s a trick. The girl seems kind though, so Pepper nods.

“Please.”

The girl lifts the towel, and Pepper gets dressed into her clean clothes, jeans and a shirt with a fried egg on the front. It’s one of Adam’s favourite shirts, and he’d steal it if he could.

“Thanks,” Pepper says,

The girl gives a half shrug. “It’s no problem.”

Her accent is

“You’re from London,” Pepper says, and it comes out like an accusation.

The girl raises her eyebrows. “And you’re from Gloucestershire, from the sound of that accent.”

“Lower Tadfield, _actually_.”

“Never heard of it.”

“It’s a bit shit,” Pepper admits, and the girl cackles.

“So is London,” she says. “I’m Liza.”

“Pepper,” Pepper says, and Liza folds up her towel.

“You’re the youngest person ever to drift successfully,” she says, more a statement than a question.

Pepper nods. “Yes. That’s me.”

Liza looks at her and then gives a shrug. “Good luck, kid,” she says, before walking off.

Pepper tugs down her shirt and looks around. Half the girls have already left.

Coraline looks up from where she’s tying her shoelaces. “Ready?”

“Ready,” Pepper says, and follows her.

*

Coraline takes her around the building, showing her how the canteen in run, where the different lecture blocks are, and how the showers work, all the while bitching about the Jaeger program.

“So the main teachers are Carmine Zuigiber, Sergeant Shadwell, and Nathan Lambert,” Coraline explains, switching the shower on and drenching a girl standing underneath. “Carmine’s a dick, she’ll get you up at 5 in the morning for simulator tests.”

“Oi, Coraline, can you watch what you’re doing?” the girl snaps, and Coraline raises a hand.

“Sorry, Liberty. Where were we?”

“Teachers,” Pepper supplies.

“Right. Shadwell’s alright, doesn’t really know what’s going on, hates Kaiju with a passion and thinks the dinner ladies are trying to kill him.”

“Are they?” Pepper asks.

“No.” Coraline shakes her head. “Mrs Tracy’s been trying to get with him for years; she always gives him extra helpings. He’s convinced she’s fattening him up for the slaughter.”

“I met Nathan in the canteen. He put me on chores.”

“Yeah he’s a dick and all,” Coraline says. “Thinks he’s better than all of us just because he’s a Major.”

She looks around and then leans in. “Want to know drama?”

“Yes,” Pepper says instantly.

“So he and Jake Pentecost—Stacker’s son—they were co-pilots right? And then one day, Jake up and leaves, doesn’t give an explanation, just packs his stuff and goes to Malibu, or somewhere like that.”

“Why?”

“Because him and Nate were sleeping together and Nate’s dad found out, threatened to cut all of Nate’s funding unless it stopped.”

Pepper folds her arms. “I don’t believe you.”

“It’s true.” Coraline shrugs. “I saw the hickies to prove it.”

Pepper doesn’t know what hickies are. “Why would anyone want to kiss Nathan, that’s gross.”

“People are into the rugged Clint Eastwood type,” Coraline says. “Or, I guess, Jake Pentecost is.”

Pepper wrinkles her nose. “I’m never kissing a boy.”

Coraline gives a bark of laughter. “Oh yeah?”

“They’re all stupid.”

“Even Adam?”

“Especially Adam,” Pepper says. “He believes everything he reads in Kaiju Weekly.”

“Oh wow, that’s still going?” Coraline’s eyes light up. “I read that when I was still at home. Is it still terrible?”

Pepper nods. “The worst.”

“My mom found my stash under my bed and used it for compost,” Coraline says wistfully. “I was so mad.”

“My mum uses the Daily Mail for compost because she says it’s full of xenophobic lies,” Pepper tells her.

“I like your mum,” Coraline says.

“Thanks,” Pepper says. “She’s okay.”

Coraline laughs again and checks her watch. “God, I’m meant to be going to training. What have you got next?”

“Nutrition plan,” Pepper says; it’s on her schedule for today.

Coraline grimaces. “Fun.”

“Young women shouldn’t be forced into dieting to achieve the perfect body,” Pepper recites, and Coraline nods sagely.

“You said it.”

*

Adam and Pepper’s nutritionist is a man whose brow bone is so heavyset, he could use it as a shelf. He introduces himself as Dr Raven Sable and attempts to shake both their hands. Pepper keeps hers firmly in her pockets, and Adam tries to crush Dr Sable’s hand with his own. Sable looks faintly amused by the both of them.

“You will have three meals a day and two snacks a day,” he tells them, handing Adam a sheet of paper, and then Pepper.

“Only two snacks?” Adam says. “That’s not fair.”

“You have to be kept in shape for the program,” Dr Sable says as Pepper scans the list.

“Hang on,” she says. “Why do I have to eat less than Adam?”

“It’s not a case of you eating less,” Dr Sable says smoothly, “it’s more a case of Adam eating more—

“This is bullshit!” Pepper says, and Dr Sable blinks. “I want to eat the same amount as Adam.”

“Me too,” Adam adds. “We should be equal.”

“Mr Young is male, and therefore—”

“Therefore, the woman has to starve herself?” Pepper folds her arms. “Same nutrition plan or I’m walking.”

“What a delightful child you are,” Dr Sable says.

Pepper smirks, and Dr Sable’s expression falls, only slightly.

*

Afterwards, the day is a whirlwind. They’re measured for suits, shoved into another Jaeger and forced to drift, remeasured because they’re both too small, and then finally sent to bed.

Pepper lays underneath the covers in the warmth and stares up at the ceiling. She feels like her head is about to explode.

“Alright?” Liza asks. She’s in her pyjamas, hair scraped back into a messy bun.

“Tired,” Pepper says, and her voice is small.

“Fair.” Liza sits on the end of Pepper’s bed. “You’ve had a tough day, ain't you small person?”

Pepper glowers and Liza laughs.

“You remind me of my friend,” she says. “Bod. You’d like him.”

“Is he in the boys’ dorm?” Pepper asks.

Liza nods. “Yeah. We’re not drift compatible, though. Worst luck.”

“Why not?” Pepper asks, curious.

Liza shrugs. “We just don’t fit together properly. Sometimes it happens. I drift with Liberty instead.”

Pepper pushes herself up to lean on her elbow. “I have two best friends, back at home. I love them, and Adam loves them, but there’s no way we could drift. Brian and Wensleydale.”

Their names feel good in Pepper’s mouth.

“Wensleydale? Ain't that from Wallace and Gromit?” Liza asks, and laughs.

“His parents are weird,” Pepper says. “My mum is weird.”

“My folks are dead,” Liza says, and rubs the end of her nose.

“Oh.” Pepper blinks. “I’m sorry.”

Liza shrugs. “It’s alright. They chose to top themselves.”

Pepper doesn’t know what that means so she stays quiet. The dormitory door opens and three girls slip inside, giggling. Liza glances over at them, and then back at Pepper.

“I didn’t never care much about family anyway,” she says, and pushes herself off the bed. “But I’m glad you’ve got your drift boy.”

“Me too,” Pepper says, and thinks of Adam’s smiling face.

“G’night.” Liza yawns, showing off missing teeth.

“Night.” Pepper says.

She rolls over in the bed to face the wall, listening to the sounds of the girls talking and getting ready for bed. The lights switch off at 10:30, and one of the girls fake-shrieks at the sudden darkness.

“Fuck off,” Viktoriya says from somewhere, and there’s a chorus of awkward giggles.

Pepper can feel Adam’s heartbeat in her own chest. She presses her hand against her skin, counts the double beats like sheep, eyes flickering closed.

When she opens her eyes again, she’s in the Kaiju cave. The rain is pouring down outside, thundering against the ground, and her feet are damp. It’s like being back in the Hogback Woods with her boys.

YOU MISS THEM

Pepper ignores the Kaiju, focussing on kicking her feet into the dirt to dig up stones. In the back garden of the pub, she once discovered several lego pieces and arranged them on her windowsill. Adam had built her a house with them.

YOU CANNOT IGNORE ME

“Yes I can,” Pepper says stubbornly and dislodges a worm.

FOOLISH GIRL

“Gender is a social construct,” Pepper says, and picks up the worm between her forefinger and thumb. It wiggles in her hand, and she throws it hard towards the darkness of the cave.

YOU CANNOT HARM ME

“Wasn’t trying to.”

YOU ARE NOT AS BRAVE AS YOU THINK WITHOUT YOUR FRIENDS

“Yes I am.” Pepper’s hands are covered in soil. She wipes them on her trousers.

YOU DON’T KNOW WHO YOUR FRIENDS ARE

“I do.” Pepper refuses to look at the Kaiju.

THERE ARE SECRETS HIDING RIGHT IN FRONT OF YOU

“I don’t care,” Pepper says loudly. “I want to go back to my bed.”

BUT YOU CAN NEVER GO BACK HOME

Pepper glares down at the ground and ignores the longing in her heart for Lower Tadfield, Brian and Wensleydale, Dog, and home-made jam sandwiches.

YOUR LOVE FOR OTHERS WILL KILL YOU

“Good,” Pepper says, and wakes up.

*

It’s easy enough to fall into a routine without realising. Pepper wakes from bad dreams about Kaiju, eats with Adam in the mess hall, practises fighting Kaiju in the simulator, and sleeps in the dormitory with the other girls.

It’s exhausting.

“Do you ever want to go home?” Adam asks over breakfast.

Pepper raises her head from where she’s glaring at her cornflakes. “I haven’t thought about it.”

“Me neither,” Adam says, and swirls his spoon around his bowl. “I miss the others.”

Pepper knows that he does. She can feel it.

“They miss you,” she says.

“I miss you,” Adam says, and Pepper frowns.

“What?” she says. “I’m right here.”

Adam blinks. “Oh yeah. Sorry. I’m not with it.”

“Neither am I,” Pepper admits, and stands up to dump her bowl in the compost bin, ignoring the way her legs shake.

*

Pepper wakes from a Kaiju dream, gasping up at the ceiling. She rolls over onto her side and blinks at a shadow in the doorway. Two people are standing there, one standing outside the girls’ dormitory, and one standing on the inside.

“I’ve spoken to Silas,” a male voice says, and the second figure elbows him.

“Keep it down, Bod,” the girl says, “I ain't waking up the entire dorm for this.”

Liza then. Pepper lays very still in her cot and strains to hear what they’re saying.

“He thinks there’s a spy in the base.”

“I know Newt’s obsessed with Kaiju, but he wouldn’t sell out his own people,” Liza says.

“Not Newt. A pilot.”

“Yeah, cos a pilot is telling information to a Kaiju, aren't they?”

“I’m just saying.” The boy’s voice rises and Liza hisses.

“Stop yelling! If Coraline wakes up she’ll skin us both.”

“Well if you’re not going to listen then I’m just going to go—”

“I am listening,” Liza says, tugging on her ears. “Look at these satellite dishes. We’re hearing you loud and clear.”

The boy makes a grunting noise. “Just keep an eye out, okay?”

“Yeah, yeah,” Liza says. “I will.”

“This is serious.”

“I’m being serious,” Liza insists. “I’ll question everyone to find out if they’re secretly shacking up with Kaiju in their spare time—”

One of the girls rolls over in her bed, letting out a loud snore. Liza and the figure still, his arm reaching out to grab Liza’s.

“I should go,” the boy says, “before anyone wakes up.”

“Go back to Silas’ mission.”

“He knows what he’s doing.”

“You don’t.”

The boy doesn’t answer. He squeezes Liza’s arm instead, backing away from the door.

Liza sighs. “Don’t get yourself killed, Nobody Owens.”

“I won’t,” the boy, Nobody, says, and Liza closes the door, turning away.

Pepper shuts her eyes tightly and lets out a little breathy sigh of pretend-sleep. A spy, in Armageddon Base? For some reason, she isn’t as surprised as she thought she’d be. For some reason, a part of her brain is smug.

She falls asleep before she can figure out why.

*

Anathema arranges a meeting for them one afternoon, not that Pepper knows what day it actually is. They’ve all bled into one, but she knows it isn’t Christmas yet, because Coraline says that the Rig decorates for the holidays. Pepper doesn’t know how long Coraline’s been living here, either, only that she knows the place like the back of her hand.

They meet outside the hangar bay, where all the Jaegers are kept. Anathema is wearing her labcoat, and for once, Newton isn’t hovering behind her, waiting to trip over something.

“Where’s Newt?” Adam asks.

“London,” Anathema replies, “with Shadwell.”

“Why’s he there?” Pepper asks.

“Important business,” Anathema says, “Little Miss Nosy.”

“What kind of important business?” Pepper continues, pushing her luck, but Anathema only laughs.

“I can see why Carmine thinks you’re annoying,” she says, unlocking the hangar bay doors with her pass.

“Carmine thinks I’m annoying?!” Pepper demands. “She’s the annoying one!”

“Her hair is fake, too,” Adam says, and then both of them stop talking.

It’s true that they’ve seen a lot of Jaegers by now: the simulators, the information videos Shadwell forces them to watch, even the pictures in Pepper’s childhood bedroom. These, however, are real Jaegers.

“That’s Diablo Intercept,” Pepper says, launching herself forward, “and Solar Prophet.”

“You know your stuff,” Anathema says.

“But they’re from Lima.” Pepper turns to Anathema. “Why are you housing them here?”

“We bought them off the Peruvian Government,” Anathema says. “They’re ours now.”

Adam is hanging back, staring at the rows of Jaegers standing there motionless. Pepper watches his eyes track each one and come to a stop at a small yellow one.

“Whose that?” he asks.

Pepper looks at the Jaeger but she doesn’t recognise it. “Is it English?”

“Mm.” Anathema nods, a smile playing at her lips. “Let’s go look at it.”

Pepper and Adam follow Anathema to the yellow Jaeger. It’s about 20 feet tall, compared to the other Jaegers which tower over them. The cockpit is seated in a dome-like structure, with glass so that the pilots can see out. Pepper can’t see any sort of weapon, not like Gipsy Danger’s chain sword, but its fists are bulbous, perfect for punching.

“She’s beautiful,” Pepper says. Normally she doesn’t like the patriarchal convention of calling modes of transport ‘she,’ but this Jaeger is definitely a girl. Girls are good at fighting, and taking down giant lizards.

“She’s very yellow,” Adam adds. He reaches out and touches the Jaeger’s leg, and Pepper feels the coldness of the metal against her palm.

“She’s yours,” Anathema says, and the two whirl around to face her.

“What?!” Pepper exclaims. “We can’t own a Jaeger?!”

Anathema laughs, delighted. “Well, you do now! Me and the others, well, we decided it was best that you had your own. She’s small, not like Crimson Typhoon or Cherno Alpha.”

“The perfect size for a child,” Pepper says, staring up at the Jaeger’s cockpit.

“Has something happened?” Adam asks tentatively.

Anathema doesn’t answer for a second, and then pushes her glasses up her nose. “We just decided it would be best that you two had a Jaeger. Just in case.”

Pepper can feel Adam’s worry rolling off him in waves. She places her own hand on the Jaeger’s leg, in the spot where Adam’s had been.

“What do you want to call her?” Anathema asks.

“Hogback,” Adam says instantly.

“Queen,” Pepper follows, and looks at him. “The Hogback Queen?”

“I like it,” Adam says, and his eyes shine blue.

*

The first time they take the Hogback Queen out for a test run, they crush two forklifts underfoot. Pepper thinks this might just be a bad idea.

*

Pepper is late to meet Adam before class because Yvaine was taking forever in the shower. When she finally arrives, Adam is sitting on the ground with his eyes closed, and he jumps when Pepper kicks his leg.

“That hurt,” he says.

“No it didn’t,” Pepper replies and sticks out her hand. “Come on, I want to see what torture Carmine has in store for us.”

In their last lesson, Carmine had them upside down in the simulator. Pepper has a massive bruise on her thigh that she’s called Derek.

“She’ll probably make us strip to our underwear and fight simulator Kaiju.” Adam says moodily as they walk towards the classroom. “I think she likes seeing us in pain.”

“Who doesn’t like torturing small children?” Pepper asks.

“Her and R.P. Tyler would be best friends,” Adam says, and Pepper snort-laughs, before realising she hasn’t thought about home in so long.

“Do you think he’s yelling at Brian and Wensleydale for feeding Shutzi treats when she’s in the front garden?” Pepper asks.

“Oh yeah.” Adam nods his head. “He’s probably purple faced right now, shouting at them over the fence.”

“Like a giant swollen grape,” Pepper says, and Adam grins.

“Do you remember—”

“Those sweets from the corner shop!” Pepper interrupts excitedly. “The ones with the goo inside!”

“Remember when it exploded in my pocket!” Adam says, “And I reached my hand in — and it was like snot — and I was like ‘ew, gross!’ It stained my coat!”

“Your mum was so angry!” Pepper remembers Mrs. Young’s face. “She grounded you for a whole Saturday.”

“And you flashed lights from your bedroom window so I could see you.” Adam’s face is split in a smile. “That was the best.”

“Now I don’t have to flick a torch on and off,” Pepper says. “I can just be in your brain.”

She reaches forward and presses her finger to the centre of Adam’s forehead. He leans into the touch, and then copies the motion.

“I like being in your head,” he says.

“I like being in yours.”

They look into each other’s eyes for a moment, and Adam hesitates, like he’s about to speak.

“We should get to class,” Pepper says instead.

“Probably,” Adam agrees, and they start walking, in step with one another.

*

It’s not Carmine lounging at the front of the room, however. Nathan Lambert, poster boy for poster boys is standing there, arms folded.

“You’re late, pilots,” he calls to them.

“I was waiting for Pepper,” Adam says.

“That’s not a good enough excuse,” Nathan replies, but waves his hand towards their seats. “As I was explaining to your fellow classmates, Miss Zuigiber is unfortunately not able to be here today.”

Pepper can’t hide her smirk.

“So I will be your teacher. Miss Moonchild, is something funny?”

“No,” Pepper says.

“Then wipe that smile off your face,” Nathan says, and then reconsiders. “On second thought… Come here, you can demonstrate something for me.”

Pepper doesn’t move. “What is it?”

“Miss Zuigiber gave me the lesson plan for today. You’re going to be battling Spine Hunter.”

The group groans collectively. They’ve been fighting Spine Hunter in the simulator for a good three weeks, with nobody able to strike a killing blow. Suresh and Ilya had come the closest, their blade pressed against the Kaiju’s neck, before it decided to bite their Jaeger’s head off.

Pepper stands up, looking over at Adam. “Come on.”

“Mr Young, you can sit back down,” Nathan says.

“What?” Pepper asks. “He’s my drift partner.”

“And today, we’re not going to be using partners,” Nathan says. “I want everyone to drift with Sarah.”

“I’ve never drifted with Sarah,” Pepper argues. “How would that prove how good I am in a Jaeger?”

“Well, if Adam is ever indisposed, we’ll know that you can hold your own in battle,” Nathan says. “Come on, Moonchild. Not backing away from a challenge?”

Pepper folds her arms. “No.”

“Good,” Nathan says, and smiles. “Let’s get going.”

*

Pepper refuses to let Nathan strap her into the Jaeger head so Letitia does it, clipping Pepper in with a frightening quickness.

“I’m good at my job,” she says, when Pepper asks. “But if you fall out, it’s not my fault.”

“Thanks for the confidence,” Pepper says sarcastically.

Sarah bobs around her tank, her brain stem making her look like a disgruntled squid. Pepper reaches out as far as she can with her hand and touches the tank with the tips of her fingers. It’s warm to the touch.

“You’re just in a bowl of soup,” Pepper tells her.

Sarah doesn’t say anything back.

“Moonchild!” Nathan yells from outside the cockpit. “Activating drift in Three… Two… One… Go!”

Pepper feels like she’s been vomited up into the drift. At first everything is dark, and then there’s a stinging scream of light, and Pepper’s knees buckle.

Something runs at her in the darkness and pushes her to the ground. Pepper can’t see, and she shouts instead, hands flying up to protect herself.

“It’s not safe!” the person cries out, a woman’s voice. “It’s not safe with him, don’t you understand? Don’t you see?”

Pepper reaches up and tries to claw the person away from her. “Get off me!”

“Why don’t you understand?” the woman asks desperately. “He’s with them. He’s a liar.”

Pepper feels long hair, a snub nose, and a wailing mouth. Her vision clears slowly, and she finds herself staring up at a blonde woman, bleeding from the nose.

“Sarah?” Pepper asks, and Sarah leans in close enough that Pepper can smell her sour breath.

“You’re going to die,” Sarah tells her, and Pepper is ripped from the drift.

*

Pepper wakes on the floor of the cockpit, with Nathan standing over her. Tears are streaming down her face, and she reaches out to him, snotty nosed, to pull her up. Nathan ignores her waiting hand and instead turns to the class.

“And this, boys and girls, is why we need to learn to drift with others.”

Pepper manages to force herself upright, still crying. Sarah is still bobbing in her tank, the lights attached to her nervous system going crazy.

“She’s scared!” Adam bursts out from the group of gathered classmates. “Let her out of the rig.”

“We’re in the middle of a war,” Nathan continues, as Pepper starts to unclasp herself from the pilots seat, hands shaking. “We have to be adaptable.”

He unclips the final strap of her harness, and Pepper stumbles out. She raises herself to her full height and spits at his feet.

“Fuck you,” she says, and runs.

*

When Adam finally finds Pepper, she’s sitting cross-legged on the head of the Hogback Queen, the cold wind whipping at her face. She’s turned up the collar of her red coat to try and protect herself, and also to hide the fact that she’s been crying.

Adam watches her silently from below, and Pepper looks down at him and wonders why his haircut is so terrible.

“You missed dinner,” Adam calls up to her. “I saved you a seat.”

Pepper shrugs as her stomach growls. “I wasn’t hungry.”

“You didn’t miss much,” Adam says. “Are you coming down?”

“No.”

“Okay.”

Adam begins the slow descent up the Hogback Queen, slowly figuring out the accidental nooks and crannies that can be used to scale up the front of the Jaeger. Pepper furiously rubs at her cheeks to wipe away the tears, hoping that Adam won’t notice that she was bawling her eyes out five minutes earlier.

Adam misses his footing somewhere around Hogback’s groin and slams his entire body into the cold metal. Pepper leans forward to help, just in time to hear Adam give a grunt and pull himself up again. His forehead is knitted with concentration as he climbs his way up towards her.

When he reaches the top, Pepper sticks out her hand and hauls him up onto the top of Hogback’s head. Adam lies face down for a moment, catching his breath, and then rolls over onto his back. His face is flushed the same colour as Pepper’s coat.

“You need to do more weight training,” Pepper informs him.

“Ugh,” Adam replies, and sits up.

Pepper automatically budges up to make space for him. “And you’ve got dirt on your nose.”

Adam rubs at his face with the flat of his palm. “Brian always had dirt on his face.”

“Boys are gross,” Pepper says.

Adam reaches into his pocket and pulls out a flattened bread roll. “For you,” he says unceremoniously.

“To eat? Or to throw at people?” Pepper asks, taking it from him.

“Whatever you want,” Adam says.

Pepper tears off a chunk of dough with her teeth and swallows it whole. She hasn’t eaten since breakfast this morning, and that feels like several centuries ago.

“I punched Nathan,” Adam blurts out.

Pepper stops decimating the roll and looks at him. “You what?”

“I punched him. After you left.” Adam has the decency to look a little ashamed. “He made a comment about you running away, and I couldn’t help it—”

“Where did you punch him?” Pepper interrupts. “You’re not tall enough to reach his face.”

“The dick.”

Pepper cackles. “Excellent.”

Adam looks down at his dangling feet and smiles at them. “He crumpled. Like I’d deflated him.”

“Serves him right!” Pepper thinks of his stupid ugly face. “I hate him. I hate everyone here.”

The ‘except you’ is obvious.

“Do you want to quit?” Adam asks. It’s so sudden that Pepper almost chokes on her bread.

“What?” She asks. “No!”

“I didn’t know if you wanted to be here.” Adam scratches the back of his head. “If you wanted to leave, I’d come with you.”

“Do you want to leave?” Pepper asks him.

Adam doesn’t say anything. Pepper frowns, edging closer.

“Hey.” She says, “I’ll leave if you want to go—”

“No, I don’t want to go.” Adam fiddles with his hands. “I feel—I feel like I have to be here. Like there’s a plan. And for it to work, I have to be a pilot.”

“What do you mean by a plan?”

“I don’t know,” Adam says, “Just— You know how you never feel in control? And that there’s someone else behind it all, in your brain, making you do stuff? That brain person, they have a plan for me. And the plan involves me being here.”

Pepper stares at him. “I never feel like that.”

Adam blinks. “You don’t?”

She shakes her head. “Never. I always feel in control.”

“Oh.”

Pepper reaches out slowly and touches his hand. His skin is still cold. “It’s okay,” she says. “You need to be here, and so I’m going to be here. Pilots, together.”

“Together,” Adam echoes, but he doesn’t sound so sure.

Pepper looks out across the half-empty Jaeger bay to distract herself from Adam—Someone in your brain? Making you do things?—When she spots Nathan Lambert marching through the bay, a scowl etched into his face.

“Hey,” Pepper says, raising the bread roll above her head, “20 points if I can hit him in the dick.”

Adam looks over and examines the situation. “30 points for a headshot.”

“You’re on,” Pepper says, and launches the missile through the air.

*

It’s a few nights later when Pepper drags herself back into the dormitory, pink and damp from the shower. She’s got scrapes and bruises all over her body, and her hair is wet against her pyjamas. She just wants to climb into bed, pull the covers over her head, and pass out.

When she pushes the door open, the girls are lounging on the floor in the centre of the room, bottles surrounding them. At Pepper’s entrance, several of the girls hide their glasses behind their backs, looking guilty.

“Oh thank god it’s just you,” Liberty says. “I thought you were a teacher.”

“I’m too small to be a teacher,” Pepper says, closing the door behind her. “What are you doing?”

“Drinking,” Coraline says, holding a half-empty glass between her fingers. “You’re not allowed to partake, but you’re welcome to sit with us.”

Pepper realises she isn’t going to get any sleep with everyone else awake, so she crosses the room and sits down on her bed. Liza is lying on the carpet on her back, tossing a bottle cap in the air with her left hand and catching it with her right.

“Where did you get the alcohol from?” she asks.

“I have friends in high places.” Coraline tries to tap the side of her nose, misses, and prods herself in the eye. “Fuck it.”

“I forced Jake to bring it in for us,” Liberty says. “We go way back.”

“Like five months,” Viktoriya snaps.

Liberty sticks out her tongue in response and goes back to peeling the label off a Smirnoff Ice bottle.

“What’s the special occasion?” Pepper asks.

“I’ve officially been in this place for five years,” Coraline says, and takes a swig of her drink. “Happy unbirthday to me.”

“Oh,” Pepper says, “well done.”

“Me and Why-Were-You-Born just reached our half decade anniversary,” Coraline cheers herself. “What’s the present for five years?”

“Wood,” Viktoriya says. She’s got a bottle of vodka in front of her, which she taps her nails against. “For five.”

“How do you know that?” Liberty asks curiously, and Viktoriya shrugs.

“I just do.”

“Someone find me a plank of wood as a present,” Coraline says. “And then slam me over the head with it and put me out of my misery.”

“You shouldn’t say stuff like that,” Pepper says.

“But it’s true.” Coraline lolls her head towards Pepper. “I’ve been here five fucking years and I’ve never even seen combat.”

“Do you really want to fight a Kaiju?” Pepper asks.

“I would kill to fight a Kaiju,” Coraline says. “Wouldn’t you?”

Pepper thinks of the Kaiju from her dreams. “Yes.”

One of the girls tips back her drink, wipes her mouth on the back of her hand. “I wish we’d invited the boys.”

Coraline blows a wet raspberry. “Fuck the boys.”

Yvaine rolls her eyes. “Some of us are in love with our drift partners—”

Everyone reacts with jeers and pretending to be sick. Pepper laughs, pulling her covers off her bed and wrapping them around herself.

Yvaine flushes pink. “You all stop that!”

“Aw, we’re just teasing.” Amabella leans forward, pinches Yvaine’s cheek. “You and Tristan will have a lovely wedding.”

Coraline turns to Pepper. “What about you? Fallen in love with Adam yet?”

“Yuck.” Pepper sticks out her tongue. “I’m not going to fall in love with a boy.”

“I see you two whispering in the corridors,” Liberty accuses. “He likes you.”

“No he doesn’t!” Pepper protests. “We’re just friends. We grew up together.”

“Childhood sweethearts,” Coraline says.

“And anyway, he’s keeping something from me,” Pepper blurts out before she can stop herself.

Coraline frowns. “What do you mean?”

“I don’t know.” Pepper realises all eyes are on her, looks down at the ground. “But he’s hiding something. I can feel it.”

“A bad secret?”

“I think so.” Pepper fidgets with her hands.

“Do you think you should tell an adult?” Coraline asks, her voice careful.

“I don’t know.”

“Hey.” Coraline leans close enough to Pepper that she can smell her horrible breath. “I may be drunk right now, and I may be angry, but we’re here for you, okay? Girls need to stick together.”

Pepper sniffs. “We need to fight the patriarchy.”

“Exactly.” Coraline gives her a lopsided smile. “Now normally I’d offer you some vodka but you’re a baby, so I’m going to give you a shot of orange juice.”

Pepper gives a weak laugh and watches as Coraline pours her orange juice from a carton stolen from the canteen. “Thank you.”

“No problem.” Coraline hands it over. “Enjoy your mixer.”

Pepper takes a sip and it’s tart on her tongue. She closes her eyes for a few seconds, welcoming the taste. She misses orange juice from Adam’s house, where it was the expensive kind, with bits in it.

“I heard Dr Crowley talking the other day, when I was delivering a note,” Yvaine says. “He says it’s suspicious that there hasn’t been a Kaiju breach in a while.”

“It’s a good thing.” Amabella says. “We should be grateful.”

“They’re biding their time.” Yvaine sticks her finger into her drink, swirls it around, then sucks off the excess liquid. “Plotting.”

“Kaijus can’t plot,” Liberty says. “They’re just big lizards.”

“They can speak,” Pepper says without thinking. The girls look at her.

“What?” Meilin says. “No, they don’t.”

Pepper chews on her lower lip. “I think they can.”

“Are you sure you didn’t give her any alcohol?” Amabella asks. “Giant alien lizards don’t chat.”

Pepper tucks her knees up under her chin. “I’ve heard them.”

“When?”

“In my dreams.” She doesn’t miss the eye rolls from the other girls. “I have!”

“Of course you have,” Coraline says, and pats her shoulder clumsily. “I believe you.”

“No, you don’t,” Pepper says.

“Meh,” Coraline replies, “I’m drunk enough to believe you.”

Pepper sighs and pushes Coraline off. “I’m getting into bed.”

“Nighty night.” Coraline pours more alcohol down her throat, and Pepper shakes her head, climbing into bed.

She glances across the room and locks eyes with Liza. She’s sitting upright now, staring directly at Pepper.

“I believe you,” she mouths, and Pepper’s heart twists inside her chest.

*

Another day, another of Carmine’s tests. Pepper is so tired that her under-eye bags are impossible to ignore, and Letita had told her that she looked like a corpse that morning.

Pepper looks at her reflection in the simulator glass and sticks out her tongue. Letita was right.

“Adam, Pepper!” Carmine calls out, and the group play a drumroll on their knees. “Into the simulator.”

The task is to perform a recognisable dance move, decided on in the drift, and performed to the best of the Jaeger’s ability. Suresh and Ilya, who had just gone before, had dabbed so hard that the Jaeger’s arm almost went through the wall.

Pepper thinks she and Adam might do the macarena, just because that’s the only dance move Adam actually knows.

“Are you ready?” Pepper asks as Carmine straps them in.

“No talking, Pippin,” Carmine says, and pinches Pepper’s skin when she clips Pepper’s harness.

“Ow!” Pepper complains. “It’s Pepper.”

“Mm,” Carmine says, taking no notice. “I’ll count down when I’m outside, and then you’ll enter the drift. Understood?”

“Yes,” they echo, and Carmine steps out of the cockpit, slamming the door shut.

It’s dark inside the Jaeger head, and Adam turns to Pepper in the gloom.

“Let’s just focus on the task,” he says, and Pepper frowns.

“What do you mean?” she asks.

“Don’t go looking for anything else,” Adam says. “Let’s just do the task so we can go.”

“I don’t go looking for things,” Pepper says. “I’m not that nosy.”

She’s trying to make him laugh but he doesn’t. It’s quiet inside the cockpit, the voices of the students muffled, and Pepper picks at the loose skin on her thumb.

“Drifting in three!” Carmine shouts from the outside. “Two! One!”

And then they drift.

_Darkness. Pepper’s bedroom. Adam on Pepper’s bed. Pepper is Adam, she’s watching herself, they’re doing homework, everything is quiet, Adam wants to tell her but he can’t—_

Pepper is spat out into the cave. She groans, because she must have passed out somehow; there’s no way that she’s back in here conscious. She pushes herself upright, rubbing her eyes, and then slams her fist into her thigh to wake herself up.

“Come on Pepper,” she hisses. “Back to Simulator. Back to Carmine’s stupid test.”

There are voices up ahead. Adam’s voice, she could pick it out anywhere. She can feel him too; he must have ended up in her dream. His emotions are a mixture of confusion and sadness, and she walks towards him, the ground slippery underneath her feet.

“Adam!” she shouts, and then stops.

Adam has his back to her in the cave, wearing normal clothes. Pepper is still in her Jaeger suit—she can touch it and feel the sharp metal—but Adam is in jeans and a shirt, items she hasn’t seen in months.

He’s talking to the Kaiju King. Pepper can see the hulking mass hidden in the shadows, the Kaiju blue eyes peering out from the dark. Its voice is a harsh rattle; it makes Pepper shudder and want to curl in on herself.

“I don’t like this,” Adam is saying stubbornly. “I don’t want to do this.”

OH BUT YOU MUST.

“It’s not going to work,” Adam insists.

IT WILL.

“How do you know?”

BECAUSE YOU ARE A CLEVER BOY. AND BECAUSE PEPPER IS A STUPID GIRL.

“Pepper isn’t stupid!” Adam says loudly. It echoes around the cave. “She’s my friend.”

SHE IS HUMAN. SHE WILL DIE SOON.

“I’ll change it,” Adam mutters. “I’ll save my friends.”

The Kaiju King peers at Adam through the gloom. The shadow tendrils wind their way around Adam’s legs, but he pays them no mind. Pepper, hidden behind rocks, wants to cry out, but she doesn’t want to be seen.

YOU CANNOT CHANGE YOUR PATH. THIS IS YOUR DESTINY.

Pepper scoots herself closer to Adam, staring at the back of his neck. She’d stared at the back of his neck at school too, wanting to reach out and touch, but just a little too far to reach—

She trips on a rock and goes flying, landing in a thump on the ground. She lifts her head dizzy to see Adam and the great blue eyes of the Kaiju staring at her.

“Pepper!” Adam says, and Pepper pulls herself to her feet.

“What are you doing?!” She asks. “Why are you speaking to him?”

“This isn’t for you to see!” Adam says. “Go away!”

“No!” Pepper shouts. “Why are you talking to a Kaiju, what’s going on?”

“I said go away!” Adam yells back, and a force punches her through the stomach, knocking her backwards.

She feels the burning blister of Kaiju rain, hears the screams of the elders in the camp, watches the flesh melting off their bodies and then—

Pepper trips up out of the drift, ringing in her ears. She’s on her knees on the floor of the cockpit, heaving up onto the floor, barely able to understand where she is or what just happened. Somewhere in her peripheral vision she can feel Adam’s presence, hovering over her, one hand about to touch—

“Don’t touch me,” she snaps without looking up.

Adam retracts his hand.

As the ringing in her ears subsides, she can hear the students debating if they should storm the simulator and rescue her. Carmine’s voice sounds like she’s trapped in a bubble as she approaches, telling Pepper to wait and stay still.

Pepper grits her teeth and pushes herself upright. She can feel a stinging in her chest, the exact spot where Adam pushed her. She disconnects herself from the harness, ignoring Carmine telling her to wait for the instructor, and pulls her shirt aside.

A burn mark. Kaiju blue.

She turns to Adam, who stares back at her. He’s biting at his lower lip like a child, and Pepper looks down at the blistering skin, the way brown has turned blue, the smell of bubbling flesh like the burn on her wrist.

“Adam,” she says, and then gags.

Behind her, Carmine unlocks the simulator cockpit. Pepper retches again, but nothing comes out. She keeps expecting to see blue bile dribble from her mouth like a Kaiju death.

“I don’t know what fight you’re having,” Carmine says, with an eye roll, “but don’t bring it into the drift, okay little idiots?”

Pepper raises her head and locks eyes with Adam. He’s staring back at her, like a rabbit in the headlights.

“What have you done?” she says, and her voice betrays her by wavering.

“It’s for the greater good,” Adam says, frozen in position. “Pepper you don’t understand—”

“You’re the spy,” Pepper says, breath quickening. “Liza’s friend— He knew. You’ve been telling them about the Jaegers!”

“We’re going to save humanity—”

“By destroying it?!”

“Yes!” Adam exclaims. “Pepper, look around! Everything is awful, climate change is destroying the world, our politicians are terrible! We need to destroy it!”

“It’s not right!” Pepper stamps her foot. “You’re just being cruel!”

“You were living in a tent full of hippies before me,” Adam says, eyes flashing dangerously. “You were going to live and die there, and I saved you—”

Pepper moves before she realises, her face pressed up against Adam’s own. “You’re just a stupid boy, you didn’t save me.”

“I’m Kaiju,” Adam says, and why didn’t she ignore him, that day in class, when he looked at her with his blue eyes? “We’re going to save this planet.”

He turns from her, walking away, and Pepper bellows with the force of a thousand women, loud enough to wake the dead.

*

They drug her in the medical bay. She doesn’t stop screaming, begging them to go after him, that the Kaiju know all their plans, that there’s been a spy all along. Anathema injects her with a silver liquid, pins her down to a cot with bars, and smiles when Pepper howls.

“It’s stress,” she says. “I see now that we shouldn’t have placed you in a Jaeger so young.”

“Adam—” Pepper gurgles, her mouth limp, “he’s Kaiju.”

“Of course.” Anathema strokes Pepper’s hair. “You’re going to have a nice sleep now.”

Pepper tries to bite at Anathema’s arm, but she withdraws it quickly. She scribbles something on a chart instead, and then looks at Pepper’s vitals.

“So fascinating,” she says to herself, and Pepper struggles as the room starts to darken. “I’ll be here when you wake up.”

Pepper drools in response, and drops down into sleep.

*

Pepper dreams of the cave again and knows that something is different. She can feel Adam’s stubborn anger before she sees him, but the connection feels wrong. Adam is here, physically transported, and Pepper is only dreaming.

She ducks down anyway, the cave floor sharp on her knees, and peers out towards him. He’s sitting cross legged in front of the Kaiju, wearing clothes that she’s never seen before.

“This is stupid,” Adam says. He sounds like a child.

THIS IS RIGHT.

“Hmf,” Adam replies, picking at a loose thread on his jeans. “But when you reach England, you’ll protect Lower Tadfield, won’t you? Like we promised.”

WE WILL TRY.

“You promised,” Adam says. “Nobody there gets hurt — not Brian, or Wensleydale, or Mum and Dad. Not even Dog.”

WE CANNOT SAVE THE LIVES OF A FEW HUMANS JUST BECAUSE YOU DEMAND IT.

“I’m the Emissary,” Adam says, and sniffs. “You put me here for this.”

WE CAN TAKE YOU OUT AGAIN.

“No, you wouldn’t,” Adam says, folding his arms. The Kaiju doesn’t answer.

When Adam next speaks, his voice is quiet. “I miss Pepper.”

SHE IS A THREAT TO YOU. SHE MUST BE ERADICATED.

“I still miss her.” Adam rests his chin on his knee. “She’s my best friend.”

Pepper touches the burn mark on her stomach with the flat of her palm, pushes down against the raw skin until she winces. Adam makes a noise of pain too, leaning forward to protect himself.

“She’s hurting,” Adam says. “I could have convinced her to come with me, if she’d listened—”

NO.

“She—”

WE ATTACK DOVER TONIGHT. THERE IS NO TIME FOR GOODBYES. PEPPER WILL BE DESTROYED, ALONG WITH THE OTHER PILOTS. THE END OF JAEGERS.

Pepper manages to hold back an intake of breath. The Kaiju are attacking England tonight — breaking their way through the King Charles Bridge. There’ll be no pilots ready, no Jaegers ready for docking. It’ll be a massacre.

Pepper needs to wake up.

She punches herself in the chest again, but only hears a cry of pain from Adam. She ignores it, scrabbling around in the dirt for something sharp, something deadly.

SOMEONE IS HERE.

Pepper’s hands clench around a shard of rock, the edges cutting into her palm. She can hear movement but she ignores it, pulling up her trouser leg. Her skin looks strange in the moonlight, and Pepper bites her lip as she positions the shard over her skin.

THERE YOU ARE.

She looks up to see the Kaiju, wet and glistening, five eyes gleaming at her in the dark. Its mouth opens wide enough that she can see down the back of its pulsating throat, the stench of rotting meat filling the cave.

“Bog off,” Pepper says fiercely, and drags the rock down her leg, cutting open the flesh.

Adam howls somewhere close, and Pepper feels herself falling out of sleep, towards the dormitory. The Kaiju shrieks loud enough to burst her ear drums, and Pepper hears the snap of its jaws as everything goes dark.

*

Pepper wakes in the medical bay and vomits over the side of the bed. Anathema is in the chair beside her, asleep, glasses sliding halfway down her face. Pepper stares at her for a moment, and then pulls the IV out of her arm.

Her leg is aching, when she looks down at herself, blood is soaking through her trousers. She’s still wearing her clothes from the day before, but better her leg than her arm though, that’s what her mother taught her. Pepper’s always known the best place for a blood sacrifice.

She climbs out of the bed, slowly and quietly, not wanting to wake up Anathema. There’s no point in breaking into the boys dormitory; she knows that Adam won’t be there. She can feel him at the back of her mind, and it feels sour and wrong.

Pepper slips out of the medical bay, breathing hard. The clock on the wall reads 03:15, everyone will be asleep right now. She walks quickly through the corridors anyway, as far away from Anathema and her drugs as possible.

The girls dormitory is quiet when she slips in through the door. Everyone is asleep, but Pepper hurries across to Coraline and shakes her by the arm.

“Hrr?” Coraline asks sleepily. “Wha— What do you want?”

“There’s about to be a Kaiju attack,” Pepper whispers. “You need to get up.”

“Did you have a nightmare?” Coraline asks.

“No, it’s real.” Pepper shakes her again. “Come on, you need to get up.”

Coraline sits up, rubbing her eyes. “Jesus it’s the middle of the night.”

Pepper sighs. “Listen to me.”

“I’m listening. I have my eyes closed, but I’m listening.”

“The Kaiju are about to attack Dover. You need to be ready,” Pepper says.

“And how do you know that?”

“Adam…” Pepper licks her bottom lip. “He told me.”

Across the room, someone sits up in bed. Pepper turns, expecting to be told to shut up, but it’s Liza.

“Whas’ going on?” she mumbles.

Pepper figures she’s got one last chance. “The spy told me there’s going to be a Kaiju attack at Dover.”

That gets Liza’s attention. “You what?”

“Tonight,” Pepper says. “They’re attacking tonight. We need to be ready. Tell your friend, Bod.”

“Shit.” Liza runs her hands over her face. “Okay. Kaiju. Dover. Bod.”

“Can someone tell me what’s going on?” Coraline asks.

Pepper moves away from the bed. “I’m going to get a teacher. You tell the others.”

“Okay,” Liza says, and Coraline looks from Pepper to Liza.

“Am I dreaming?” she asks, and Pepper looks across to Liza.

“Explain,” she tells her, and slips from the room.

The classrooms are all empty at this time of night, so Pepper sneaks into the teachers’ quarters. The outside of the rooms all look the same, only they don’t bunk by gender. Pepper can hardly imagine Gabriel sharing a bedroom with Shadwell.

She hammers on the first door she comes across, fist against metal. There’s shifting on the other side, and then the door swings open to reveal Carmine in lingerie.

“What the fuck—” Carmine starts and Pepper interupts.

“I need to talk to someone in charge,” Pepper says. “It’s urgent, please.”

Carmine raises her eyebrows. “Little girl, it’s the middle of the night—”

“I know where the next Kaiju attack is,” Pepper blurts out. “I saw it—I’m in their head—I—”

Pepper takes a sharp breath to calm herself down, and Carmine’s eyes glance down towards Pepper’s IV bruise on the crook of her elbow. She looks back at her bedroom, where Pepper can see the outline of somebody else in the bed, and then looks back at Pepper.

“Let me make a call to Gabriel,” she says.

“It would be easier for you to take me to him,” Pepper insists. “I need to talk to him.”

“Just, wait out here, okay?” Carmine disappears back inside her room, closing the door a little, but not enough that Pepper can’t hear what’s going on.

“Mmpr?” the person in the bed says.

“Go back to sleep,” Carmine replies, and then Pepper hears the tone of the communication device.

“Gabriel? Yeah, it’s me. Sorry to wake you. I have an escapee from the medical bay on my hands. Yeah, the little black girl. The angry one.”

Pepper grits her teeth, already backing away.

“Uh huh. Send her back to Dr Device? Okay. She’s outside my door,” Carmine says, and Pepper’s bare feet squeak on the floor, aware that in the stillness of the night, every sound she makes echoes. “I’ll take her back now.”

Pepper turns away from the door, and carries on running. She hears Carmine’s shout of surprise and ignores it, careening down the corridor towards the forbidden section. Carmine shouts louder, probably waking more people up, and Pepper types Anathema’s ID code into the pin pad.

The doors swing open with a metallic hum, and Pepper dashes inside, forcing the door shut behind her.

“Hello?!” she yells. “I need—AH!”

She screams, because a Kaiju head is staring straight at her. It takes her a moment to realise it’s in a tank, and dead, but its mouth is forced open wide, displaying sharp teeth, and the eyes—the same colour as Adam’s.

The scream dies from her throat, and she steps towards the display tank. The Kaiju stares back at her, electrodes attached to every inch of its skin. It bobs up and down in the yellowish fluid, and Pepper feels sick.

“Are you okay?”

Pepper whirls around to see a middle-aged man peering at her over a pair of spectacles. He’s wearing a knitted cream jumper, and a comfy pair of slippers with plush Kaiju heads on. Pepper has only seen him on her trading cards and the occasional news report.

“Doctor Aziraphale?” she asks.

“That’s me!” Doctor Aziraphale says cheerily. “Are you alright? You look very faint.”

“I—” Pepper steps towards him. “I can’t explain. But I know where the Kaiju are going to break landfall next.”

“Oh?”

“Dover,” Pepper says. “I know there are defence systems—but the Kaiju know, they know how to get past. And they know all the Jaegers that England have on stand by, in the hangar bay. They know their weaknesses— You have to get the word out—”

“Hmm,” Doctor Aziraphale says. “And you know this because?”

“Because they’ve been inside my head,” Pepper says, because she doesn’t want to get Adam into trouble.

“Let me look at the database,” Aziraphale says. “It’ll show me all signs of Kaiju activity—”

“We haven’t got enough time to look at databases!” Pepper exclaims. “I’m not a liar—I know the Kaiju are on their way, and you need to send out alarms so that we’re ready, why does nobody believe me?!”

Doctor Aziraphale rubs his hands together in a worried fashion. “Oh dear,” he says, “I’ve never been good with children, Crowley is much better at this than me. I will send a message to Gabriel, though.”

“He’s ignoring me. He drugged me.”

“Gabriel is… He knows what he’s doing,” Aziraphale says, and then pulls a face. “I suppose.”

“Dr Fell,” Pepper says, “the Kaiju are on their way, right now. We need to do something.”

“Hmm,” Aziraphale says, and then turns away, setting up a few electronic screens. “If only Dr Geizler wasn’t in the middle of the Pacific—Ah ha! The Dover Defence.”

The Skype call sound fills the room and Pepper cringes. The screen is filled with a greasy-looking man holding a giant cup of coffee. Pepper dislikes him at once; his suit is too clean for working in Defence.

“Hello, uh, Sandalphon!” Aziraphale says. “Just checking in. Making sure everything is tickety-boo.”

“It’s three in the morning,” the man says. He flashes a gold tooth when he talks that makes him look like a used car salesman.

“Got a student here.” Aziraphale nudges Pepper into view. “Had a nightmare. Wanted to reassure her. If that’s alright?”

Sandalphon rolls his eyes. “Everything is fine,” he says, sounding bored. “Nothing has happened Aziraphale. Go back to your books.”

Pepper steps forward. “The Kaiju are on their way,” she insists. “You need to prepare yourself, man the wall, clear out the community—”

Sandalphon smiles as if Pepper is very stupid. “Little girl,” He says patiently, “there is no way that Kaiju are going to attack the Dover—”

Alarms wail on Sandalphon’s side of the screen. His face falls, and he looks behind him. “What’s going on?”

A woman steps into view, wearing the same clean suit as Sandalphon.

“Kaiju tremors outside the wall,” she says. “Too close for comfort.”

Pepper looks over at Aziraphale, who has gone pale. Sandalphon stands, placing his cup of coffee back onto the desk in front of him.

“Wait there, Aziraphale,” he says. “I need to check on what’s happening.”

The screen rocks, and Sandalphon grabs the desk to steady himself. The coffee spills, and the woman moves out of sight, speaking over an intercom. Sandalphon straightens his suit, but not before the screen rocks again, and dust floats down from the ceiling.

“I told you!” Pepper says loudly, “You need to get out!”

“An earthquake,” Sanalphon says nasally.

“It’s Kaiju!” Pepper yells. “I’m linked to Adam— They’re attacking right now!”

Something roars on the other side of the Skype call, sending shivers down Pepper’s spine. She can feel Adam’s delight inside of herself and spits on the floor to get it out.

“Miss!” Aziraphale says. “Oh good god, are you alright?”

“My partner—” Pepper says. “He’s Kaiju. I think. I don’t know.”

“The Emissary.” Aziraphale breathes, sounding both afraid and in awe at the same time. “He’s been under our noses all this time.”

They’re both distracted as someone screams over the Skype call, and Sanalphon wipes his brow with an expensive-looking handkerchief.

“I believe,” Sanalphon says, as something green and scaly crashes into view, “that we are under attack.”

The line goes dead.

“Oh dear,” Aziraphale says, wringing his hands together. “I think we’re in a lot of trouble.”

“I’m always right,” Pepper says, and feels when the Kaiju break through the wall.

It’s like a punch to the gut, but triumphant. She’s in Adam’s body, clinging to the Kaiju King as they tear down the Dover Defence, the sheer glee as their plan unfolds exactly how they wanted.

There are more Kaiju than Pepper has ever seen gathered in one place, hulking beasts with claws and barbed tails. They swing their humongous bodies to-and-fro, smashing down the wall. The waves crash around them, spraying salt and rock against their scales, but it does nothing to harm them. England cannot save herself now.

Adam is on top of the world— literally, screaming out in delight as the wall crumbles.

Then the Kaiju King bends down and snaps a human from the ground, crunches it between sharpened teeth and swallows it down. Pepper has never seen a Kaiju eat a human before— She thought they had no intestines, no digestive tract. They live to destroy, not consume.

Adam stops screaming.

Pepper is bent double on the floor but she can feel the horror inside of him, as the Kaiju King begins to feast on the humans trying to flee, plucking them from the remains of the Dover Base as they make their futile escapes.

“No!” Adam shouts, and Pepper shouts it too. “No, you promised! We’re showing humans that they’re wrong — We’re not eating them!”

The Kaiju King laughs, the sound echoing in Pepper’s ears. “OH ADAM,” they say. “THIS IS NOT GOING TO GO HOW YOU THINK IT IS.”

Adam realises that he’s sentenced humanity to death.

*

Pepper always used to say that Adam was made in a lab. She says it as a joke, of course — she’s seen Adam’s belly button and she’s met his parents — but sometimes she wasn’t so sure. Adam never seemed to actually care about real things, like his teacher’s feelings or why Wensleydale gets upset when people take his glasses.

But when they held hands in the dark whilst exploring to reassure each other they’re still there, or when they run from farmers, hearts in their throats as they laugh, Pepper thinks that maybe Adam cares about her, just her.

If she cut open his chest, her name would be written on his heart like a stick of rock.

And then Adam will wrench his hand from hers, grinning, and look around for Brian and Wensleydale as Pepper pants for breath. She can feel the ghost of his skin against her own, and she wants to reach out for him again, but something tells her not to.

Now, as Pepper curls up on the floor of a K-Science lab, listening to Adam cry out in pain, she wants to hold onto him and never, ever let go.

*

And then suddenly — everything is very slow. Like time is a runny egg, dribbling down the side of the egg cup.

And Pepper is running to the Jaeger loading bay.

And her feet are bare and bruised, and her leg is still bleeding.

And Adam is inside her head.

And she knows what she has to do.

It’s easy to scale the Hogback Queen; she’s watched Adam do it.

“Pepper!” someone shouts desperately. “Come back here!”

Pepper ignores them. Instead, she clambers inside Hogback’s cockpit, slamming the door shut after her. It blocks out the sound of everyone outside, but she can see the people running about below. Gabriel in his white pyjamas, Beelzebub in a pair of fluffy black socks.

Pepper hooks herself up to the Jaeger suit, fingers trembling but working quickly. She catches her skin several times when she tries to clip the harness, swearing under her breath as beads of blood appear.

She’s never drifted without someone supervising before. There are rows of buttons in front of her, and Pepper slams her fist down on all of them. The Hogback Queen roars to life, illuminating the cockpit. She grabs hold of the harness to steady herself, glancing out through the glass.

They’re closing the hangar doors. She knows she can burst through them.

Pepper hits the final button, and a smooth electronic voice plays through the speakers.

“Initialising drift in four, three, two—”

Pepper shuts her eyes and finds Adam out there, in the dark. He’s lonely.

“One,” the voice says, and Pepper falls.

*

_For once, the world is bright white and gleaming. There is no cave, or rocks, or pouring rain. There is only nothingness._

*

Piloting a Jaeger by yourself is hard. Not impossible, but hard. Pepper strains every muscle to get the Hogback Queen to bloody move. The Jaeger lifts up one foot, and then the other, lumbering towards the hangar doors as Gabriel screams down below.

“GET DOWN HERE!” he shouts as Pepper punches her way through the doors. “STOP DESTROYING PROPERTY.”

Pepper steps over him and through the hole she’s made, easing the Hogback Queen’s large shoulders through the gap. The outside world is dark, but there are stars flickering overhead. Pepper can’t remember the last time she saw the moon.

She climbs out of the hangar bay and starts walking. Maybe Carmine’s tests weren’t for nothing, she thinks, as she moves her arms about to test the Hogback Queen’s abilities. The mechanics creak and groan, and Pepper focuses on the Jaeger.

“Come on,” she says, “you’re a strong female Jaeger who can do this. Keep going.”

The Hogback Queen shudders a little but keeps moving. Pepper looks over her shoulder, at the small figures waving their fists at her through the Jaeger-made crater. She thinks Gabriel might be about to explode.

Somewhere in the distance, Adam makes a small whimpering noise. Pepper hears him in the darkness and changes direction, moving towards him. It feels like a tugging in her stomach, like he’s sent out a fishing hook and it’s stuck in her belly button.

The Kaiju have abandoned him. They’ve moved on ahead, she knows, towards the city. There’ll be more people there, an all-you-can-eat buffet. Pepper grits her teeth, lifting one leg up high, and then the other.

She’s running before she knows it.

*

Pepper finds Adam in the destruction of the Dover Defence centre. The building is nothing more than bricks on the ground, electrical equipment sparking sadly in the ruins. Pepper kicks aside debris with her Jaeger’s foot, trying to find any sign of human life.

She spots him curled up on the edge of the cliff, knees tucked up to his chin in a foetal position. There’s no chance he hasn’t heard her coming, but he probably assumes she’s a Kaiju, come to finish him off.

She stomps over to him and then has to wave off a seagull that’s trying to land on her head. “Go bother someone else!”

Adam looks up from where he’s lying forlornly and bursts into a grin. “Pepper!”

Pepper maneuvers the Hogback Queen into bending down so she can look at him. “I told you your plan was stupid.”

“You’re actually here,” Adam says, and scrambles upright.

Pepper flips a switch, and the glass of the Hogback Queen’s head opens so that Adam can climb inside. He’s bruised and bleeding, and he throws his arms around Pepper, pressing his face into her neck.

Pepper pushes him away. He smells of sea water and self pity, and Pepper hits him hard over the back of the head.

“You’re an idiot,” she says, “and I hate you.”

Adam’s face falls. “Are you arresting me?”

“I’m a small girl in a Jaeger,” Pepper says. “How would I possibly be arresting you?”

“I don’t know!” Adam says. “How did you get here?”

“I broke out of Armageddon Base,” Pepper says, and Adam’s mouth falls open. “What? It wasn’t hard.”

“You’re…” Adam starts, and then can’t think of a good enough word and waves his arms about. “Insane!”

“So are you,” Pepper says, and fixes him with a steely-eyed glare.

“I messed up,” Adam says, and Pepper’s glad he’s realising this. “I’m sorry.”

“I still hate you,” Pepper says. “You’re a stupid boy, and an idiot, and you should never trust strange lizards handing out revolutions.”

“I won’t trust them next time.”

“There won’t be a next time!” Pepper squawks, and hits him again.

“Ow!” Adam complains. “That hurts.”

“Stop talking,” Pepper says, “and get into your harness.”

“What are we going to do?” Adam asks, and Pepper grits her teeth.

“We’re going to destroy some Kaiju.”

*

Pepper and Adam catch up to the Kaiju just outside Ashford, Surrey. They hide behind a copse of trees, and Pepper wonders if Kaiju have eyesight issues since they can’t see them.

“They have lizard vision,” Adam says, reading her thoughts in the drift.

“What the hell is lizard vision?” Pepper asks.

“It’s all UV vision. Short wavelengths and stuff. They see the trees as orange.”

“Weird,” Pepper says, focussing on them.

I SENSE DISRUPTION IN THE BREACH

The voice scares Pepper enough that she almost falls backwards, but Adam’s hand is on her shoulder, keeping her steady.

“What?!” Pepper says. “Is he in your head?”

Adam looks at her, confused. “What do you mean?”

“How can I hear them?” she asks.“Why can I hear them talking outside of the dream?”

Adam frowns. “I’ve always heard them.”

“Really?” Pepper looks at him. “Even on the news reports?”

“Yeah.” Adam shrugs and the Hogback Queen copies. “I just thought you guys were ignoring it.”

“Why would we be ignoring it?”

“Grown ups ignore a lot of things,” Adam says, like it’s obvious.

Pepper mutters something rude under her breath and tries to remember what the Kaiju King just said. A disruption in the breach—more Kaiju? Or have Jaegers been sent out?

I think we should attack, Adam thinks in the drift.

“Really?” Pepper says. “Why?”

Adam ticks off each point on his hand. “Element of surprise. We can both fight good. It’s better to attack now, before they eat more people.”

“It’s ‘we’re both good at fighting,’” Pepper corrects, but she has to admit that she agrees with him.

Adam grins, smug. She knocks his arm in annoyance, but she doesn’t really care.

“How do you want to do this, then?” she asks.

“Charge and punch?” Adam suggests.

Pepper nods. “Charge and punch,” she agrees.

They both set into motion at the exact same moment, barreling towards the group of Kaiju. They take them completely by surprise, decapitating one with a sword punch and disemboweling another. The head falls to the ground with an almighty thump, leaking blood everywhere.

“Gross,” Pepper says, and decks a Kaiju in the stomach.

The Kaiju King roars, thundering towards them. They sidestep away from his charge, and Adam punches him in the side of the head, dizzying him for a moment.

“We probably can’t hold them for long,” Adam says.

“It’ll be enough time,” Pepper says.

“For what?”

“I don’t know,” Pepper admits, “but we just have to stop them for a little while.”

“Fair,” Adam says, and uses the sword hand to slice through a Kaiju’s leg. It bites at the Hogback Queen’s arm, and Pepper shakes it off.

“I wonder if we’ll be on TV,” Adam says.

“You’ll give your mother a heart—”She’s interrupted by a Kaiju roar and a swipe of a clawed hand. Pepper and Adam both swing out of the way on instinct and punch the Kaiju in the chest, sending it backwards. “—attack.

“Eh,” Adam says. “Worth it.”

The Kaiju King lashes out, catching the Hogback Queen. Pepper tries desperately to keep them upright, but they’re sent to the ground, landing on their back. The wind is knocked out of both of them, and Pepper coughs up blood.

“Oh,” she says.

YOU THINK YOU COULD DESTROY US?

The Kaiju King’s voice is inside her brain and all around her, filling up the cockpit with its mocking laughter.

YOU ARE NOTHING.

Faintly, Pepper can hear a crackling noise. She wonders if it’s her bones breaking, as the Kaiju King leans over them, drooling blood onto the glass barrier between them.

HUMANITY WILL NEVER WIN.

The Kaiju King raises one terrible claw. Pepper looks over at Adam and reaches out her hand. He touches the tips of her fingers, and she can feel his heartbeat. Time, she thinks. We gave people time.

A missile fires from nowhere, grazing the Kaiju King’s head. It’s not enough to kill him, but it’s enough to distract him from murdering Pepper and Adam. He roars, stumbling backwards, and then Pepper can hear the thundering footsteps of other Jaegers.

The crackling sound is louder, and Pepper realises it’s the intercom system. She sits upright and presses the button on the console to activate it..

“Oi, oi!” Coraline yells. “Taking all the glory for yourselves?”

Pepper gives a girly shout of laughter that she’ll never live down. “You came!”

“Of course we did,” Coraline says. “We’re Jaeger Pilots. This is what we do.”

Over the intercom she can hear Viktoryia shouting a Russian death cry, Liberty yelling insults, the boys screaming and howling, and best of all, the frightened roars of Kaiju.

“We’re going to defeat them,” Pepper says.

“Not if we don’t get off our back like a tortoise,” Adam says.

A Jaeger stops directly in front of them and offers a hand. Adam and Pepper both take it and are hauled upright. The Jaeger opens its cockpit, and Pepper can see Nobody and Liza together.

“I thought you were incompatible in the drift?!” she yells.

Liza looks at Nobody and shrugs. “We figured it out!”

Pepper grins, as Liza’s Jaeger closes her cockpit, and rushes back into the fray. Adam turns to Pepper, frowning.

“That boy was always suspicious of me.”

“He had good right to be,” Pepper says. “Come on. Let’s murder a Kaiju.”

“It would be my pleasure,” Adam says in a posh accent, and this time, Pepper doesn’t even hit him for it.

*

It takes all of them to take down the Kaiju King. Pepper and Adam and Liza and Nobody and Liberty and Coraline and Wybie and all the other children that Pepper has trained and lived with for months.

YOU ARE ALL WEAK, the Kaiju King roars as it lays on the ground, belly up. FOOLISH STUPID HUMANS.

“Shut up.” Pepper pants, exhausted. “We’re more powerful than you’ll ever be.”

YOU HAVEN’T EVEN CLOSED THE BREACH.

“We will.” Adam says, and slams the Jaeger’s foot down hard onto the Kaiju King’s stomach. “We’ll send you back to where we came from.”

YOU COULD HAVE BEEN THE PRINCE OF ALL KAIJU, the Kaiju King tells Adam, YOU COULD HAVE RULED THE EARTH.

“I don’t want to.” Adam says, and when the Kaiju King tries to struggle upright, Nobody shoots it in the neck with cannon fire.

STUPID CHILDREN, the Kaiju King wheezes. INBREDS. MORTALS.

“Go to hell.” Adam says, and together, he and Pepper deliver the final blow.

*

“Did you feel it?” Pepper asks Adam. “When it died?”

“No,” Adam says. “I felt nothing.”

She hugs him tightly inside the cockpit, feels him breathing into the crook of her neck. The Hogback Queen copies their motion, and they cling to each other like children.

*

Amid the remnants of the Kaiju, the pilots climb out of their Jaegers and rest. Pepper curls up against a tree and shuts her eyes, listening to the bird song, the wind, the chatter of the other pilots. Adam lies beside her on his back, staring up at the leaves above. She keeps reaching out and touching him—outside the drift she worries he’s gone.

Coraline is pacing up and down, slapping her wrist communicator to try and make it work. She’s trying to get a link to Armageddon Base, to see if there’s been any more Kaiju attacks. So far, it’s radio silence.

“Come sit,” Wybie says. He’s collapsed on the ground nearby, looking ready to fall asleep at any moment.

“I’m trying to get in contact.” Coraline shakes her wrist, and then seemingly gives up, falling to the ground beside him. “I want to know if Gabriel’s kicked us all out of the program.”

“We just saved England,” Pepper says.

“It’s Gabriel,” Coraline replies. “He’s a dick.”

Adam laughs beside Pepper. She rolls over to face him and prods his cheek. He turns his head towards her, blinks eyes that are darkening from blue to green.

She doesn’t know how long they all lie there, relaxing in the fresh air for the first time in months— years, even. It’s strange to feel the grass underneath her body, like being back in Hogback Woods, playing games with The Them. It feels like a lifetime ago.

“Oh, here we go!” Coraline says, just as Pepper is drifting off to sleep. “I’m getting a response.”

She turns up the sound on her communicator and everyone leans in to listen.

“ _Bzzt—Gipsy Danger has—Bzzt—Gone through the Breach—Bzzt—Blown Up—Bzzt—”_

“What the fuck?” Liza is sitting upright. “Are they dead?”

“I don’t know!” Coraline hits her wrist. “Work!”

“ _Bzzt—We are getting reports—Bzzt—That escape pods were deployed—Bzzt—Breach has been closed—Bzzt—Kaiju are gone—Bzzt—”_

Everyone sits in a silence for a moment, taking in the news. Nobody dares breathe, until Coraline slaps the communicator again.

“ _Bzzt—Yes—Bzzt—It has been declared—Bzzt—The breach is closed—Bzzt—We are no longer at war—Bzzt—”_

The communicator displays a hologram image, ghostly blue and flickering slightly, of two pilots clinging to an escape pod floating device. Pepper leans in and realises it’s Mako Mori and Raleigh Becket.

“ _Bzzt—I repeat—Bzzt—” the voice says; Pepper recognises it as Tendo Choi, “We are no longer—Bzzt—at war_.”

The noise is deafening. Pepper is on her feet before she knows it, as is Adam, jumping up and down in glee, hugging him so tight she thinks she might break his ribs. The other pilots are screaming with excitement, and Pepper is pretty sure some of them just kissed. Kind of gross.

“We’re safe!” she yells at Adam.

“We can go home!” he yells back.

Pepper thinks this might just be the start of her life.

*

A helicarrier picks them up from TK. Pepper’s never been in a helicopter before, and she presses her face against the glass as they fly back to base. The Jaegers dangle underneath, like puppets on a string. Pepper hopes the Hogback Queen isn’t scared of heights.

“Are you going to tell everyone about me?” Adam asks.

“No,” Pepper says. “I don’t want you to get in trouble.”

“Okay.” Adam looks out at the fields below. “Thanks.”

“No problem,” Pepper says, and watches the tiny sheep below.

*

Gabriel is waiting for them when they arrive at the Armageddon Base docking bay. He’s changed from his pyjamas into his normal white suit and dress trousers, but Beezlebub is still in their pyjamas. Their slippers are designed to look like oversized bluebottles.

“There you are,” Gabriel hisses once Pepper and Adam have dismounted from the helicarrier. “You have no idea how much trouble the both of you are in.”

Pepper looks up at Gabriel. “I don’t know,” she says, “I can probably think of an amount of trouble.”

“Run the numbers,” Adam adds.

“Conceptualise,” Pepper says, and Gabriel grinds his teeth.

“The two of you have broken enough rules to get you kicked out of the Jaeger Pilot program: sneaking out of your dormitories, waking up staff members, stealing your Jaeger and breaking government property - Do you know how much money it will cost to fix the door you broke through?!”

“That door was very expensive,” Beezlebub adds, rubbing their nose.

“The Kaiju are all dead,” Adam says. “This place is going to get shut down anyway.”

Gabriel gestures with his index finger. “This place is _not_ going to get shut down! We will stay standing, but not if small children keep breaking rules.”

“It was for the good of the world!” Pepper interjects. “If I hadn’t raised the alarm, nobody would have known Dover was about to be attacked.”

Beezlebub shrugs. “Would have seen it on the news the next morning.”

“We had to act!” Pepper exclaims.

“You are not the saviour of the world, Miss Moonchild.” Gabriel’s voice rises an octave. “You are a _child_ , who got _lucky_.”

“Gabriel, that’s enough,” a female voice interrupts.

They all turn to see a middle-aged woman standing in the middle of the docking bay, wearing a pink dressing gown. Despite the clothing, she commands the room, and even Pepper feels a little scared of her. Only a little though.

“Oh - I didn’t realise you were awake,” Gabriel says, sounding strained.

“I’m always awake, Gabriel,” the woman says, stepping forward. “I believe that you should let these children go to bed instead of yelling at them about arbitrary rules.”

“Ma’am, they broke the doors,” Gabriel says, but he trails off at the woman’s cocked eyebrow.

“They saved England. I think breaking a door is okay.” She looks at Pepper and winks. Pepper tries to wink back but only succeeds in blinking heavily.

Gabriel opens his mouth to speak, but the woman sighs instead.

“Gabriel. Go to bed. Dream about the speech you will inevitably write. Leave these children in peace.”

Gabriel folds his arms, tucking his hands into his armpits. “Fine. Come along, B.”

Beezlebub looks at Adam and blinks slowly. “Your eyes are a different colour.”

“I’ve been wearing contacts,” Adam lies.

Beezlebub cocks their head to one side and hums audibly. “Interesting.”

“I said, come along,” Gabriel mutters, and flutters a hand.

Pepper looks at Adam and gives him a look that says, _Oh my God I think they’re together._

Adam gives her a look that says, _Ew Ew Ew Gross._

The other pilots emerge from the helicarrier, yawning and joking with each other. Yvaine and Tristan are holding hands, and Viktoriya is half asleep on Ilya’s shoulder.

“I think we’ll relax the dormitory rules for one night,” the woman says. “You can all sleep in whatever room you choose. No need to separate boys and girls.”

“Thank you,” Liberty says, covering a yawn with her hand. “I can’t wait to lie down.”

“Let’s walk a bit faster, then.” Coraline places her hands on Liberty’s shoulders to steer her along. “Before I fall asleep standing up.”

The woman smiles and starts to walk away. Pepper frowns and catches up with her.

“I don’t know who you are,” she says. “Are you a pilot?”

“I’m the creator of all this.” The woman motions around herself. “I don’t believe in names.”

“Ah,” Pepper says. Just like her mother’s hippie friends. “Thank you for telling Gabriel off.”

“He can be a little harsh,” the woman says and then reaches out and touches Pepper on the arm. “Goodnight, Pepper Moonchild.”

“Goodnight,” Pepper says.

She feels Adam behind her and turns around. He’s pulled his jumper sleeves over his hands for warmth.

“Can we go now?” he asks. “I want to see the girls’ dorm.”

“Pervert,” Pepper says without thinking, and Adam cackles.

“I want to see if it’s better than ours!”

“Probably, girls are better.”

“No they’re not.”

“Uh, yeah they are.” Pepper starts walking towards the dormitories and Adam follows. “Did you see that woman back there? She shut Gabriel down.”

“Okay, I agree with that,” Adam says. “Who was she, anyway?”

Pepper shrugs. “I don’t know. She knew my name, though.”

She pauses for a moment, thinking it over. How did that woman know her name?

“I hope the girls’ beds are comfier than ours.” Adam interrupts her thoughts. “I think Nathan hides rocks under the mattress.”

“Probably does. He thinks it’ll toughen you up to be better pilots.”

“I hate him.”

“Me too.”

They walk back to the dormitory, laughing and joking, feeling a weight lifted off both their shoulders.

*

Pepper is called to Professor Crowley’s office a few days after the end of the world. She’s never met him before, or been in his office, so she doesn’t know what to expect as she loiters outside.

The door opens and a tall man with long, red hair scraped up in a bun sticks his head out. He’s wearing dark sunglasses, even though they’re inside. “Ah, Pippin.”

“It’s Pepper,” Pepper says. “You’re Crowley. I have a trading card of you.”

“Christ, are they still making those?” Crowley pulls a face. “Come in, anyway.”

Crowley’s office is dark and empty. People might describe it as minimalistic, but Pepper just thinks of it as boring. There is a desk, two chairs, and several potted plants, but apart from that, it’s dull.

“Take a seat,” Crowley says, and hisses on the last word.

Pepper sits down hard, and Crowley takes the chair opposite her. He steeples his fingers together and looks at her through his dark glasses.

“Well,” he says, “I hear congratulations are in order.”

“It was a team effort,” Pepper says. She doesn’t trust him.

“Still. You woke up the girls in your dormitory and told Professor Aziraphale what was going on.”

“Not that he believed me,” Pepper says moodily.

She notices that Crowley has a picture of Aziraphale on his desk in a gold frame. He catches Pepper looking at it and turns the picture around so she can’t see it anymore.

“What’s this all about anyway?” Pepper asks. “You’ve never bothered with me until now.”

Crowley leans forward and clears his throat like he’s about to make a speech. Pepper winces because she doesn’t want to sit through a lecture about ladylike behaviour.

Instead, Crowley says, “I think you understand by now that your drift partner isn’t human.”

Pepper swallows but nods. “Yes.”

“Good. This makes this part a lot easier.”

“You haven’t taken him away for testing have you?!” Pepper asks, alarmed. “He’s good now, we killed all the Kaiju.”

“Adam Young is perfectly fine, probably excavating his nose and smearing the contents on the dormitory walls,” Crowley says. “But it will be easier to explain to you what’s been going on.”

“What has been going on, then?” Pepper asks.

Crowley thinks on his words for a moment and then speaks. “Adam is an Emissary for the Kaiju. Which basically means—”

“A spy,” Pepper interrupts. “That’s what Nobody Owens said.”

Crowley sighs and rubs his temples. “Nobody Owens and Silas will be the death of me,” he mutters.

“But it’s right,” Pepper says. “Isn’t it? He was a spy and he didn’t know it.”

“Correct.”

“But you’re not surprised,” Pepper says slowly. “So you knew there was an informant.”

“We knew that the Kaiju had sent a child. We didn’t know where, or who.”

“So when did you figure out?” Pepper asks. “That it was Adam?”

Crowley at least has the sense to look chagrined. “When you raised the alarm to Professor Aziraphale.”

“So let me get this straight,” Pepper says. “We’ve been living in this base for months. You were testing us—Anathema put us in a Jaeger and fried our brains, and you still didn’t realise that Adam was the Emissary?”

“In our defence, we didn’t think it would be someone like Adam.”

“And what’s that supposed to mean?” Pepper asks.

Crowley doesn’t answer.

“Are you going to arrest him or something?” Pepper asks.

“No.”

“He’s a good person,” Pepper says, shocking herself with the truth of her words. “He just doesn’t know how to act sometimes.”

“Sometimes the goodest people have a little bit of bastard in them,” Crowley agrees.

Crowley’s electronic watch buzzes. It’s break time; Pepper would normally be eating snacks in the canteen on a normal day. Instead she’s in an office discussing how Adam isn’t human.

Pepper stands up from her chair. “Are we done now?”

“I suppose so.” Crowley leans back in his chair like a teenager. “Don’t tell anyone, will you?”

“Like anybody would believe me,” Pepper says.

She walks to the door and then pauses and turns around to face Crowley. “He won’t turn evil, will he?”

“What do you mean?”

“Adam. Because he’s Kaiju, he won’t turn 18 and start killing people, will he?”

“No. He’ll be an ordinary, normal human, just like you.”

“Okay,” Pepper says. “But how do you know?”

Crowley studies her for a moment and then shrugs.

“Oh, I don’t know,” he says with a sly smile, pushing his sunglasses down over his nose to reveal Kaiju blue eyes. “I just do.”

*

They fly them out to Hong Kong for the medal ceremony to commemorate the end of the war. Pepper, who’s never been to the North of England, let alone another country, gets the worst jet lag of her life and spends the first day in her hotel bed, trying not to vomit.

Adam jumps on top of her when he gets back from sightseeing, carrying a paper shopping bag that smells delicious. Pepper pokes her head out from under the covers and attempts to push Adam off the bed with her feet.

“This place is amazing!” Adam says, pulling things out of his bag. “There’s so much food, and it’s so brightly coloured, and we toured the Shatterdome base and saw the Jaegers.”

“I had a dream where we abolished gender and identified as sentient marshmallows,” Pepper replies, sitting upright. “What’s the base like?”

“Amazing.” Adam’s green eyes gleam. “Here, I got you this.”

He passes her a small wooden figure that Pepper assumes is a child’s toy. Upon inspection, it turns out to be a Kaiju that you can pull all the limbs off of. Adam pulls out another one with a near-identical colour pallete and makes them battle each other. Pepper hides a smile.

“Do you think you’ll be okay for the ceremony?” Adam asks her.

“If I stop feeling like I’ve been stepped on by a Kaiju, then yes.”

“You better be. I’m not going up there by myself.” Adam reaches into the bag again. “I got you dumplings.”

“Ooh,” Pepper says, and holds out her hands, “Give me.”

Adam hands them over and Pepper tucks into the dumplings using her hands. Adam climbs further up the bed, until they’re lying next to each other. He’s wearing house slippers that the hotel concierge gave them, blue fuzzy things with a pom pom on the end. Pepper offers him a dumpling, and he takes it.

“Apparently they’re building droids here,” he says through a mouthful. “Like Star Wars. With feelings and stuff.”

“The Jaegers have feelings,” Pepper says. She misses the Hogback Queen and hopes she’s having a nice sleep in the Armageddon Base.

“Yeah, but they can’t move by themselves. These droids will be able to.” Adam wipes his fingers on the duvet. “Isn’t that cool?”

“I guess,” Pepper says. “Women don’t have equal rights but droids will.”

“You sound like your _mum_ ,” Adam accuses. “Give me another dumpling.”

“No.” Pepper holds them out of reach.

“I bought them for you!”

“You can’t take back a gift.” Pepper sticks out her tongue.

“I’ll fight you for them,” Adam says crossly, and Pepper grins.

“Alright, then.”

*

They haven’t brought any formal clothing with them, not that Pepper had any in the first place, so they turn up to the ceremony in grass-stained jeans and cotton shirts. Pepper can see Gabriel having heart palpitations in the back row, as the pilots stand neatly in a line on stage, waiting to be called.

It’s alphabetical order, so Pepper has Stephanie Lanphier, pilot of Hydra Corinthian on one side, and Mako Mori, saviour of the universe on the other. It’s enough that Pepper’s palms are sweaty, and she’s forcing herself to look straight ahead.

Mako Mori is shorter than she expected, wearing a dark blue pantsuit that matches the ends of her dip-dyed hair. She’s relaxed in the lineup but keeps looking back at Raleigh Becket, who is gazing at her like she’s the only person in the world.

Adam is near the very end of the line, standing next to An Yuna, who is showing him how she can dislocate her shoulder. Pepper is very worried he’s going to try it tonight in the hotel room, and she’s going to have to call an ambulance when he injures himself.

“You’re the girl who sent out the alarm for the Dover attacks,” a soft voice says beside her.

Pepper looks up stupidly to see who spoke and catches Mako’s eye. Her stomach does a weird flip-floppy thing.

“Yes,” she says. And then, because she’s acting like an idiot, she adds, “That was me.”

“You should be very proud,” Mako says. “To get the word out.”

“Thank you,” Pepper says shyly. “I mean, you did more than me.”

“I did what I had to do. To avenge my parents.” Mako looks down at the ground. “Pentecost, too.”

“I’m sorry,” Pepper says. “I heard about what he did.”

“He was a good man,” Mako says, and then straightens. “And now we recognise his achievements.”

“Yes,” Pepper says as the fanfare starts. “Celebration time.”

Mako gives the tiniest hint of a smile, and Pepper will hold onto it for the rest of her life.

*

In the few hours before they leave for the train station, Pepper and Adam wander the base, saying goodbye to everything.

“Goodbye, canteen and your terrible food.”

“Goodbye, Jaeger simulator and all the bruises you gave me.”

“Goodbye, boys’ dorm that smelt of B.O.”

“Goodbye, girls’ dorm and your uncomfotable bed.”

“Goodbye, assault course and your weird tests.”

“Goodbye, Sarah. I’m glad you donated your life for us.”

“Goodbye, hospital room where you stole Pepper.”

“Goodbye, Hogback Queen…. We love you.”

*

Mr and Mrs Young drive them home from the train station. Mr Young has glitter in his moustache, which Mrs Young explains was from the street party they held to celebrate the end of the war. pparently it was very good, and R. P. Tyler even had a shandy.

“What was Hong Kong like?” Mrs Young asks on the motorway.

“Amazing!” Adam says. “I want to live there.”

Mr and Mrs Young exchange worried looks.

“School first,” Mr Young says, “then you can maybe look into a year abroad.”

“We saved the world,” Adam says crossly. “I don’t need to go back to school.”

“Explain the Pythagorean theorem to me,” Mr Young says.

Adam looks at Pepper, who shrugs. “I don’t know.”

“Then you still need to go back to school,” Mr Young says, satisfied. “You may know how to pilot a giant robot, but you still need to learn algebra.”

“It’ll be important in later life,” Mrs Young adds.

“When was the last time you used algebra?” Pepper asks curiously.

“All the time, to measure baking ingredients,” Mrs Young says casually. “Oh look, a sign for Legoland. First person to spot the next sign wins a point.”

“What do points mean?” Mr Young asks jovially.

“Winning,” Adam says.

“Domination,” Pepper says.

“... It means prizes,” Mr Young says, sounding a little sad. “Have none of you watched Play Your Cards Right?”

“No, because we’re not eighty years old,” Adam says, and Mrs Young tuts.

“Adam! Be nice when you’ve got guests around.”

“Pepper isn’t a _guest_ ,” Adam says. “She’s _family_.”

Pepper doesn’t even try to hide the smile that spreads across her face at his words.

*

“So,” Mr Young says as they pull into Lower Tadfield, “I suppose we’ll be dropping you off at the pub, Pepper?”

“My mum should be waiting there,” Pepper says, looking out of the window. There is bunting hanging from telephone lines, and Greasy Johnson waves at the car as they drive past.

“Missed her?” Mrs Young asks.

“Mm,” Pepper replies.

Mr Young parks the car outside the Axe and Bottle, but doesn’t turn off the engine. Adam leans towards her, so close she can smell fruit pastilles on his breath. Mrs Young has always been good at delivering travelling snacks.

“I’ll come see you this afternoon,” he says earnestly. “After I’ve unpacked.”

“I’ll be waiting,” Pepper says, and ignores the urge to hug him goodbye.

She clambers out of the car, dragging her backpack with her. She sticks her head through the window and nods at Mr and Mrs Young.

“Thanks.”

“Any time,” Mrs Young says sweetly. “We’ll see you later.”

Pepper nods, and steps back so that the car can drive away. Adam twists round in his seat, looking out the rear window and waving. Pepper waves back, and then lugs her rucksack up to the closed door of the pub.

She raises her fist to knock, but it’s suddenly thrown open, and her mother is standing in the doorway.

“Hello,” Pepper says, and then she’s swept up into a hug that could break her spine, her mother clinging to her and burying her face in Pepper’s hair.

“I saw your medal ceremony on the news,” she says. “You looked so brave. I was so proud.”

“You were the person who told me off for signing up,” Pepper complains, and her mum presses a kiss to her forehead.

“I was wrong. For once.”

Pepper smiles smugly. Her mum rolls her eyes at her and drags her inside. “Come on in. I’ll make you nettle tea, and you can tell me everything.”

“That’s disgusting.”

“It’s good for you! And I even made biscuits.”

“Out of what, weevils?”

“They’ve got chocolate chips in, actually.” Her mum pauses. “Well, vegan chocolate. But still!”

“I’ll try one,” Pepper says. “If I have to.”

“You do,” Her mum says, and then looks at her again. “It’s good to have you home.”

Pepper stands on the sticky flooring and breathes in the smell of stale beer and home-grown weed and thinks maybe this is home, after all.

*

Her mother promises she didn’t touch Pepper’s room whilst she’s been away, but Pepper finds her bed is covered in holistic magazines and the top of her dresser is littered with crystals. Pepper sweeps them off into her underwear drawer and shoves the magazines under her bed. She doesn’t have time for this.

Otherwise, the room is thick with dust, and the corner edges of her posters are yellowing. Pepper looks at the faded pictures of Mako Mori and thinks _, I saw you; we saved the world together_.

The last time she was in this room, she’d never drifted. It feels like the drift has always been there—that Adam has always been inside her head, and vice-versa. Was there ever a time when she didn’t know what he was feeling, or when he didn’t feel her pulse inside his own veins?

Pepper sits down on the edge of her bed, the movement causing dust to rise from the duvet and gather in the air. She waves her hand through it, like touching smoke, and then wipes her hand on her jeans.

She wonders what will happen tomorrow.

Pepper’s broken from her thoughts by a rock hitting her bedroom window. She frowns and stands, walking over just as another rock hits the glass. She looks out and spots Adam standing in the pub garden, a handful of stones clutched to his chest.

She pushes open the window and leans out. “You’ll break the glass!”

“It’s worth it!” Adam says, dropping his pile of rocks. “Are you coming?”

Pepper shrugs.

“Wensleydale and Brian are meeting us in the woods,” Adam says, and then reaches into his pocket and pulls out a red apple. “I stole you this.”

“From where?”

“Orchards.” Adam waves it in front of her. “Come on. ”

“Wonderful,” Pepper says sarcastically. “I’ll be down in three seconds.”

“I’ll be counting!” Adam yells, as Pepper slams the window shut.

*

They pass the apple between them as they walk into Hogback oods, Adam wheeling his bike along. Dog sits in the basket at the front, and Pepper bites him off tiny pieces of apple so he can share it, too.

“He missed me,” Adam says proudly. “He did a wee when I came home.”

“That doesn’t mean he misses you, it means he’s got incontinence,” Pepper says.

“No it doesn’t,” Adam says. “Dogs wee when they’re excited.”

“That’s stupid,” Pepper says. “What if when we see Wensleydale and Brian, Brian wets himself in front of us?”

“I wouldn’t be surprised,” Adam says, and Pepper laughs.

The sky is darkening overhead despite the time of day, and Pepper pulls her coat tighter around herself.

“Where did you put your medal?” Adam asks. “My mum put mine on the corkboard.”

Pepper reaches into her pocket and pulls it out. “I didn’t know,” she admits, “so I took it with me.”

Adam takes it from her, holds it up to the last dregs of sunlight. “Pippin Galadriel Moonchild. Defender of Earth. Canceller of the Apocalypse.”

“Thank you, Pentecost,” Pepper says dryly and nudges him.

Adam laughs, handing the medal back to her. She tucks it safely back into her jeans pocket and thinks of Penetecost’s funeral.

“I can’t believe he’s dead,” Pepper says. “Can you?”

Adam shakes his head. “It felt like he’d always been around. Like God.”

Pepper snorts. “God isn’t real, stupid.”

Adam takes the last bite of the apple in response. He tosses the core to the ground, hands sticky with juice, and wipes them on his coat.

“Do you think we’ll ever pilot a Jaeger again?” Adam asks.

“I don’t think so,” Pepper says. “Do you?”

“No,” Adam admits. “I’ll miss it.”

Pepper looks at him. “We’ll always be in the drift together.”

“Yeah,” Adam says, “I like that.”

It begins to rain overhead and Pepper freezes on instinct. The water splashing around them is clear, however, splattering against the ground to darken it, not dye it blue. For the first time in Pepper’s life, the rain hits her skin.

They reach for each other automatically, Pepper’s fingers curling around Adam’s own. He sticks out his tongue to taste the rainwater, and Pepper copies him, the softest water she’s ever experienced.

She tilts her head back, eyes closed, mouth half open. The rain is getting heavier, drenching them both, and Pepper can smell the wet earth and wonders how she ever survived without this.

The two of them stand there, hand in hand, drowning in the aftermath of the Apocalypse.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! Please comment if you enjoyed.


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